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J A M E^5 

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F L A G G 



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NEWYOI^ 

C^OR^ H.DOMN COMPANY 



l53-'' 



Copyright, 1912-1913 
The Phillips Publishing Company 



COPYRIGHT, 1914 
By Gkorgk H. Doran Company 



JON » 1914 ^^^ 

©CI.A374581 



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I SHOULD S AY S O 




CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. Further Down East . . . 13 

II. The Dinner Party . . 31 

III. Auto Fois — Auto Moeurs . 49 

IV. Cream or Lemon? .... 69 
V. Unteresting People . . .91 

VI. Theaters ... . . -113 

VII. Where TO Summer Well . .133 

VIII. Parlor Entertainers . . .151 



/ Should Say So ! 



CONTENTS— Continued 



PAGE 

IX. "Come Live With Me and Be 

My Cook!" . . . . .169 

X. The Call of the Sex . . .189 
XI. From Gibson to Goldberg . . 205 



/ Should Say So J 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

"Mother! Fahther! Don't go out on a night like 

this." 17 

— And threw him back into the sea 25 

"Have you met Mrs. La Deeddah ?" 33 

"Those who come from New Rochelle." 39 

"Miss Burke is so chatty and entertaining" 43 

"Blinkensop is selling this because he wants a 

more powerful car." 53 

"This car isn't sold, is it?" . 57 

"I don't know what it is, but do it." 61 

"You mean dim irreligious light!" she whispered 

naughtily and wittily 73 

"I'm sure you two will have lots in common — " 77 

Oliver Herford joins them, stirring his cup of 

tea w^th a lady-finger 81 



/ Should Say So J 



ILL USTRA TIONS— Continued 



PAGE 

Matthew J. Pillweather . . . 93 

Augustus G. Pest 97 

"We can't afford presents this year." The picture 
that caused all the trouble 101 

Don't balance the papers against the fern dish 
and read with one eye and drink your coffee with 
the other 115 

You seem to be gazing into a mattress with the 
cover off 123 

The American business man always finds it 
necessary to blow smoke generously in the face 
of every woman in the play 127 

Bore's Head Inn 135 

Soldiers' Monument 139 

A Corner of the ladies' parlor 143 

The Atlantic Ocean from our veranda — a sketch 
by Miss Peabody. Miss Peabody did this free 
hand. She never took a lesson in her life .... 147 



/ Should Say So I 



ILL USTRA TIONS— Continued 



PAGE 

Charlie Towne as Mrs. Fiske 155 

Bill Irwin tells his famous story of the greatest 
newspaper break 159 

Old Irv Cobb: "Git Hung, Nigger — Git 
Hung!" 163 

"This is it!" smiled S. H. Ludwig 171 

"He is shown a string — all sizes and ages." .... 175 

"She's looking for a maid herself," smiles the 
mahout. "That is Miss Vera Lipsalve of the 
Winter Garden." 181 

She shrugged her shoulders prettily and made a 
Carmen movement at him with her hips 193 

They met in mid-air 199 

A. B. Wenzell's models haven't anything but 
evening clothes— poor things ! 207 

Howard Chandler Christy's heroes simply love 

to slide on polished floors 209 



/ Should Say So J 



ILL USTRA TIONS— Continued 



PAGE 

Harrison Fisher knows what the tired business 

man likes 211 

Orson Lowell is really in the furniture business 213 

May Wilson Preston's — it looks easy, but isn't. . 215 

C. D. Gibson has a fountain pen — hence the 

Shredded Wheat effect 217 

Mr. Morgan goes without an umbrella when it's 

raining ink 219 



/ Should Say So I 



FURTHER DOtFN EAST 




Publishejs' Note 

THE rugged coast of New England is the setting 
for this gripping tale. Here we have the lives 
of those rugged, simple, yet coastwise folk laid be- 
fore us with all the fine distinctness of the cameo, with 
that fidelity to sickening detail, that sympathetic in- 
sight into the hearts of a rugged people, that poetic 
feeling for Nature in her more tempestuous moods 
that have brought Flagg to his present pinnacle as a 
novelist. The salt spume that is lashed to a custard 
is brought to your very nose ! The curious, discordant, 
yet haunting cry of the rugged horseshoe crab as it 
flies, deathward, toward the powerful lens of the 
lighthouse — the kindly humor and the quaint tribal 
customs of a once dominant race whose rugged — 
Read it, it is unbelievable but convincing. 



/ Should Say Sol 



Further Down East 

*• X^OD pity people at Palm Beach 
I on a night like this!" 

V A Cap'n Littlefield put this over 
at supper on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24th, at 
his residence on the extreme edge of the 
coast of Massachusetts, near New England. 
His dotter continued eatin' her fried sword- 
fish slab unmoved. Not so his wife. She 
upset a whole chunk of blueberry cake 
down her throat the wrong way (just like 
a woman!) and burst into unmanly tears. 

'What's smatter. Mother?" The Cap'n 
set daown his cup of ''shells" and looked 
anxiously over his owl glasses at her. 

Mother wiped her eyes on the red and 
white tablecloth. 

"Narthin', Nathan, cep'n it kinder made 
me think of our boy!" 

"There, there, Mother! Don't cry; he'll 



14 I Should Say So I 

be here yit — he promised he'd be here on 
Christmas Day — and, by Godfrey, ef he 
said he would, narthin' ain't a-goin' ter 
stop him!" 

^'Why would he go to sea!" she moaned. 

'Wal," he said, '"twas on accaount of his 
bein' scared of ottermobiles! Jes listen to 
that pesky wind!" 

It was really terrific. The icy wind be- 
lascoed around the clapboards, reaching 
into the house with its frozen tenacles like 
some Boreal octopus. 

The house rocked like a laundry hamper 
in the blast, and the snow drifted in 
through the chimbley and under the doors. 
It was sump'n awful! 

There propbably never was such a storm 
in the history of Massachusetts as this here 
one. Above the roar of the wind could be 
heard the poor freezing clams as they 
dragged themselves, with chattering shells, 
out of the icy breakers. The whistling- 
buoy seemed to whistle ^'Gee-e-e! This is 
unprecedented!" There were icicles hang- 
ing from every breaker as it broke on the 
breakwater. 



Further Down East 15 

''Come, look, Fahther!" Cap'n Little- 
field's dotter, Elmiry, had left some pack- 
ages she was tying up with scarlet ribbon 
and had breathed away a space on the 
frosted pane. "See, the gale hez blowed 
your dory clean up onter the roof of the 
meetin' haouse!" 

And it was so. Cap'n Littlefield seen it, 
b'gum, with his own eyes. 

He shuk his weather-beaten head and 
went back to the tabil with the readin' 
lamp onto it and buried himself once more 
in his copy of ''The Common Law." The 
Cap'n was a notary-public, and hed ben 
in the legislater. Might go into it agin 
ef he felt like it. He would, b'gosh, unless 
lobsterin' got better. 

Lobsterin' warn't what it was. Every- 
thin' was goin' to the dog-fish. Tenny- 
rate 'twouldn't do a mighter harm to keep 
up his readin'. 

The Cap'n hed also ben a whaler. One 
reason his son left hum — (Don't care for 
that? Oh, well, turn over and read the 
ads.) 

Elmiry went back to her Christmas bun- 



16 I Should Say So/ 

dils. Mrs. Littlefield was puttin' away the 
supper dishes under the sofa and tidyin' 
up generally. 

Suddenly above the roar of the storm 
they heard a faint call. It was from the 
beach. 

''Listen! What was that?" Mrs. Little- 
field dropped the castors with a crash on 
the floor. The Cap'n closed his book re- 
luctantly and looked up at his wife. 

''Gol-swamp all salt-hake!" he cried, 
''somebuddy's callin' on the beach!" 

He sprang from his patent rocker and 
grabbed his golf cap. ''Come, Mother! 
Bring the lantern — come!" 

"Mother! Fahther! Don't go out on a 
night like this — " Elmiry begged on her 
knees. 

"Hush, child!" said her mother. "We 
must go; someone's in need! It might be 



our . . ." 



The word was swallowed up in the aval- 
anche of snow that fell smotheringly in 
as the door was opened, and the Cap'n 
and his wife rushed out into the storm, 
blindly toward the sea. (Ocean.) 




" MOTHER ! FAHTHER ! DON'T GO OUT 
ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS " 



Further Down Rast 19 

Now, Rough Reader, we will leave these 
good folks making their way in the teeth 
of the storm to the cry of distress, and gaze 
upon another scene, even more thrillin'. 
It was night, at sea, and the waves were 
runnin' mountains high. On the wave- 
washed deck of the barkentine ^'Salena P. 
Peabody," of Provincetown, Mass., lashed 
to the lee-cuspidors, was a young sailor. 
This young man's name was Lem Little- 
field. He had been gone from hum eleven 
months. He had been shipwrecked hun- 
dreds of times, shanghaied, and marooned 
on dessit islands, and while it would not 
be strictly true to say he had been eaten 
by cannibals, he had nevertheless been 
chewed by them. He'd had a pretty dark 
brown time of it, by and large. He was 
the only living thing on that vessel, barring 
a feeble old rat that couldn't jump over- 
board on account of sciaticy. The masts 
had been blown plumb out of their sockets. 
The rudder was unshipped and was only 
hanging by a thread. The water in the 
hold was rising rapidly and the life boats 
were all on fire. The ship, except for 



20 I Should Say So I 

these things and a terrible list to port, was 
in first-rate condition. But Littlefield was 
annoyed. In the first place he was an- 
noyed because he had not eaten food for 
thirteen days. He was annoyed because 
the ship was heading for a sunken reef — 
he knew this by some sixth sense of the 
seafaring man — he was annoyed because it 
was snowing. Every little thing annoyed 
Littlefield. 

^'Breakers ahead!" 

The cry would have rung through the 
ship if there had been anyone to ring it. 
But the man who was supposed to do that 
sort of work had been washed overboard 
the day before. He didn't have such a 
fine voice, anyway. 

There came an ominous lull in the roar 
of the storm. 

Branketybung-slam-scrunch — ! The ''Sa- 
lena P. Peabody" hit the reef! 

It ripped the tar-wadding out of her. 
Littlefield was frightfully annoyed at this. 
He found himself in swimming. He was 
quite weak and would gladly have given 
up, but his New England conscience kept 



Further Down East 21 

him afloat and he feebly made his way, 
a quarter of an inch at a time, toward a 
light that he dimly saw over the tops of 
the waves. He had promised to be hum 
on Christmas and always kept his word. 
But, Lord, he was only human after all, 
even though he did hail from New Eng- 
land! He couldn't hold out for many 
more strokes — the water was freezing his 
heart — his breath was coming in little 
sailor pants — the light ahead was gone — 
gone . . . 

''Hold the lantern high. Mother!" 

Cap'n Littlefield waded waist high into 
the icy breakers, while his wife, holdin' 
the lantern above her head in the whirlin' 
snow, cackled words of encouragement to 
him, through the frozen folds of her 
tippet. 

"I've got him. Set daown the light. 
Mother, and lend a hand — " 

The two dear old people dragged the 
lifeless figure of a sopping man up out 
of the reach of the billows. 

"Somehaow, Fahther — " Mrs. Littlefield 



22 I Should Say So I 

puffed, as they carried their limp burden 
up onto the eel grass, "it kinder seems 
'propriate to be savin' a human critter on 
Christmas Eve! Pore boy!" She held 
the lantern near the man's face. 

"It's our boy, Fahther, it's our Lem! 
Look!" 

"Ye can't be sure jest from the face, 
Mother. Strawberry marks are the only 
sartin things. Hez he got any?" 

"Don't be foolishern ye can help, Fah- 
ther — it's our Lem, come back from the 
grave — on Christmas Eve — carry him up 
to the house, quick!" 

The dear old folks carried their son, 
still unconscious, staggeringly to the house 
and laid him gently before the Franklin 
stove. 

"Quick, the birch-beer, Elmiry! It's 
Lem — come back to us — " Elmiry leapt. 
They plied the frozen and half-drowned 
lad with the life-giving liquor and 
wrapped him in hot blankets, and slapped 
his numbed hands and feet and wept with 
joy over him. 

The fuss that was made over the Prodi- 



Further Down East 23 

gal Son was a snub alongside of the rum- 
pus those coastwise folk made about Lem! 

At last their ministrations were reward- 
ed and the lad opened his big blue eyes 
and smiled feebly in recognition. The 
storm could storm, and be gosh-darned! 
Then they fed him Election Cake, and 
Marble Cake, and doughnuts and rasp- 
berry sherbit and fried Puddin' and scrod 
and fish balls and appile tunnovers. 

And he lay back in his mother's old 
arms and smiled back at them all, as yet 
he was too weak to say anything. They 
knew that when the birch-beer began to 
get in its effects he would chirk up an' 
talk to them. 

He lay there and blinked and looked 
happily around at the old familiar conch- 
shells and dried starfish on the whatnot, 
at the crayon portrit of his idiot brother 
who had voted for Bryan twice, at the 
old merlodeon that Elmiry used to play 
"Row, Row, Row" on, at the collection 
of Royal Worcester vases his mother had 
gotten with the tea — all the old things 
brought glad tears to his eyes. He was 



24 I Should Say So! 

Hum! Goshtermighty, it was good! He 
sighed with contentment. 

'Wal, Lem," said the Cap'n, strokin' 
his 'boy's hair with his great rough hand, 
and smilin' with affection too deep for 
mere words, ^'not figgerin' in this ship- 
wreck, haow's life ben treatin' ye? Did 
ye make any money on your trip around 
the world?" 

Lem smiled and shuk his head. 

'^Hmm — didn't, hey — hmmm!" The 
Cap'n scratched his head. ''Ye knew this 
was Christmas, didn't ye, Lem?" 

Lem smiled and nodded his head. The 
Cap'n pursed his old lips and looked up 
at the ceilin'. Silence for a full minute. 
The Cap'n slowly withdrew his horny old 
hand from his son's fair head. 

'T s'pose ye brought your mother and 
Elmiry and me some remembrance — 
Christmas presents?" 

Lem smiled and shuk his head. 

The Cap'n's steely blue eyes seemed to 
harden as he looked sternly at the lad. 
"Ye knew this was Christmas, and you 
didn't bring me and your mother and 
Elmiry no presents?" 




. AND THREW HIM BACK INTO THE SEA 



Further Down East 21 

Lem smiled again and shuk his head 
gently. 

The old Cap'n rose painfully from his 
chair. So did Mrs. Littlefield. So did 
Elmiry. No one spoke. The old patri- 
arch motioned with his grizzled head 
towards the lad's feet, and Mrs. Little- 
field, understanding, mutely lifted one in 
each hand. Lem looked up at his stern 
old father with questioning eyes as the old 
man grasped him under the arm-pits. 
Still no word was said. The Cap'n looked 
at his dotter and motioned again with his 
wonderful old silver-crowned bean. El- 
miry opened the front door and the snow 
rushed in. The old people carried their 
son out into the storm and made their 
way against the suffocating gale. What 
if their fingers were frozen? What if they 
did catch double pneumonia? That sweet 
old New England sense of justice warmed 
their hearts! 

They carried him out to the end of the 
jetty, never faltering, and threw him back 
into the sea! 



/ Should Say So J 



THE DINNER P^RTY 



X 




/ Should Say So ! 

The Dinner Party 

I'M AFRAID we are a little early!" 
Your wife throws this remark out 
lightly as, on entering your hostess' 
apartment she sees no one in the drawing- 
room. 

No answer. 

She follows the guiding maid to the 
ladies' cloak-room. ''No, gentlemen's 
room at the end of the hall, please!" 

"Oh!" 

While Polly, your wife, is trying to 
kill time in two ways, with pink powder 
before the mirror, you in the men's room 
are also stabbing eternity by peering with- 
out interest at various photos of unknown 
people that adorn the chiffonier and walls, 
and mildly wondering who the devil 
"Fondly Theodora" was. 

Then you think you can trace a re- 



32 I Should Say So I 

semblance to your nost in the man on 
the end in the yellowed photo of the 
Princeton Glee Club of '89. You have 
now reached the door and see Polly stand- 
ing in her doorway. 

'What time is it, Paul?" 

''Twenty to eight. Gee! We're always 
the first at every dinner-party we go to — " 

"And we didn't go right down to the 
car when it was announced just for that 
reason. You know how we sat stifif and 
bundled up in our drawing-room. Next 
time let's be late, really!" 

"We always say that, too; why do peo- 
ple say 7:30 if they don't mean it — " 

"Sh! There comes some one else!" 

You step back into the room, and an- 
other gentleman says "Oh!" as the maid 
steers him to the right room. You and 
the next comer eye each other, start to 
speak, think better of it, and cough; then, 
with hands clasped behind you, you begin 
to examine the photos and match-trays 
again with a remarkable appearance of 
sincere interest. The other man starts at 
the other side of the room, doing the same 




HAVE YOU MET MRS. LA DEEDDAH ? 



The Dinner Party 35 

thing; you come together with a bump. 
Great surprise! 

''I beg pardon!" 

^'I beg yours! Quite chilly, isn't it?" 

^'Yes, indeed; it's getting colder." 

These banalities unite you two in a 
common hostility toward the next man 
who enters and deposits his hat and coat 
on the bed. 

Although all three are strangers, the 
relative position for the moment is that 
you and No. 2 are old college chums, and 
No. 3 is a rank outsider — probably studied 
bookkeeping by correspondence. 

The relations are miraculously changed 
the next instant by the entrance of No. 4, 
who greets No. 2 warmly — ''how's the 
boy?" etc. This puts you in the rank out- 
sider class again, with a slight afifection 
for No. 3. 

"Let's go in, eh?" says No. 2 to No. 4. 

All four step on each other's toes. ''xA.fter 
you"; "No, after you"; fatuous waving of 
palms and mock-serious bows; exit. And 
enter drawing-room, where you can im- 
mediately distinguish the hostess by her 



36 I Should Say So ! 

hysterically hospitable manner. There are 
several women with her. One of them 
slyly drops a lighted cigarette into the 
fireplace. 

Introductions. Hostess presents you to 
a dog-collar and a rope of you-can't-tell- 
'em-from-the- real-thing-pearls. 

''Have you met Mrs. La Deeddah, Mr. 
Punctual? — Mr. Paul Pantoum Punctual, 
the poet." 

''I haven't had the pleasure, although I 
have been presented to her seven or nine 
times this winter!" 

Mrs. La Deeddah gives you an ''Iron 
Maiden" look, as much as to say, "I got- 
cher, Steve, and I'd like to hand you one 
if I wasn't such a little queen!" 

"Mrs. Soulful, I want you to meet Mrs. 
Punctual, the wife of Paul Pantoum Punc- 
tual, the poet." "Howdydo?" gurgles the 
dame with no eyelashes who has been told 
by some social Angora she looks like the 
Mona Lisa. She has played the role ever 
since, smiling mysteriously, as if she had 
swallowed a safety-pin, but was reassuring 
herself that it was closed. 



The Dinner Party 37 

''Do you write, too?" 

''Yes," smiles our wife, — "I write laun- 
dry-lists on Monday morning and market- 
lists every day!" 

Thereby is Moany Liz set back eight 
spaces on the parchesi-board. 

Cigarettes are offered. 

"Oh, I was croaking for one!" sighs a 
delighted young cigarette fiend in a Lucile 
gown. "May I?" "Indeed you may — 
this is Libertine Hall!" laughs the host. 
He gets that off at every dinner party. 
"Oh, aren't you terrible!" approves a blue- 
eyed lady with an unterrified bosom. 

A maid catches the wild and nervous eye 
of Hostess. Whispered conference. Then 
Hostess announces, "We won't wait an- 
other minute for Bert and Carrie Nabor. 
We've given them twenty minutes' grace. 
Shall we go in? Probably the dinner is 
spoiled as it is!" 

The bell rings, and Bert and Carrie 
arrive breathless. 

"So sorry! Couldn't help it." 

"Do they live out of town?" you whis- 
per to Hostess. 



38 I Should Say Sol 

'^Out of town, nothing! They live right 
on this block — eleven doors down!" 

'Tsn't it the limit?" 

You sententiously remark that those who 
come from New Rochelle in Arctic hip- 
boots always arrive at a party before the 
Hostess' last hook has joined her last eye 
in holy wedlock — before the Host has 
taken the brown-paper patch off the safety- 
razor cut on his chin! 

^'Say too zhoor come sar," laughs Host- 
ess, absent-mindedly helping herself so 
generously to the caviar that three people 
at the other end of the table have to divide 
six sturgeons' eggs between them. 

You are an observing man, so you notice 
that one of the serving-maids is extremely 
efficient, and has that indefinable air of 
having been in the family for years. It is 
hard to say just what gives that impression, 
but you can always tell. It must be a 
joy to have a good servant for years — 
even for months. There is something 
about this maid — 

Your Hostess smiles at you, and whis- 
pers: '^You remember Selma — I saw you 




' THOSE ^VHO COME FROM NEV^ ROCHELLE ' 



The Dinner Party 41 

looking at her. Polly gave me her tele- 
phone number!" 

At every dinner party you go to during 
the winter Selma waits upon you with that 
same unmistakable air of having been in 
the family. It gets so, it is with difficulty 
that you remember exactly where you are. 

Conversation at a dinner party is neces- 
sarily, under the conditions, an awful thing, 
the rule being that a pause on the part 
of any one of the contestants is a social 
lapse, and not to be tolerated. The cold- 
storage snicker and the tinned chuckle are 
in constant demand. 

If everybody by the laws of chance 
happens to be silent simultaneously (such 
dreadful lacunae do occur even at the most 
carefully cocktailed and subsequently al- 
coholized dinners), then your party loses 
and the dinner-party next door wins. 

Here are a few remarks that are being 
used this century: 

"Yes, you begin at the outside and work 
toward your plate; that brings you out 
right." 

"I had such a time separating husbands 



42 I Should Say So ! 

and wives — I guess you can stand sitting 
next to Walter for one evening, can't you? 
That was all because George didn't show 
up!" 

"Did you hear Charlie Towne's latest?" 

"I go to the theater to be amused. 
There's enough tragedy in real life." 

"She lost eighty pounds in a week, but 
she looks like a hag now!" 

In magazine stories it is always "at a 
signal from the hostess the ladies rose and 
retired to the drawing-room," as if friend 
hostess ran up a flag or yanked a sema- 
phore. 

You dive for the usual dropped hand- 
kerchiefs, the hostess wags a playful finger 
at you all and says : "Now don't stay in 
here for hours!" 

The dullest moment has arrived. 

The host struts about opening cigar- 
boxes and liqueur bottles, just as if he 
felt quite at home. 

You know exactly how the poor lump 
feels. You are sorry for him — ^a little. 
You know how hard it is trying to appear 
natural, hospitable, and gay, and how he 




MISS BULKE IS SO CHATTY AND ENTERTAINING' 



The Dinner Party 45 

hasn't anything to say and pretending he 
has van-loads of cute remarks up his sleeve. 

Later, when the maid says your car is 
at the door your hostess says sweetly, ''Must 
you go? Well, you won't mind dropping 
Miss Bulke on your way, will you?" 

Bulky, old girl, says, inhaling it, "Oh, 
no, I don't want to trouble them! Call 
me a taxi!" 

''Oh, no, dear, I'm sure they will be 
only too delighted! — Won't you?" 

"Oh, too delighted! Where do you live, 
Alma?" 

"One Hundred and Seventy-ninth Street! 
But you're sure it won't be taking you out 
of your way?" 

"Not at all — we live in Thirty-seventh 
Street!" 

Miss Bulke is so chatty and entertain- 
ing as we take her up to Newburgh! 



i 



/ Should Say So J 



AUTO FOIS-AUTO MOEURS 




i 



/ Should Say Sol 

Auto Fois — Auto Moeurs 

Which is Swedish for 
The Point of View Changes with the Income 

TEN years ago you and Polly went 
about in the street-cars. 
Five years ago you used taxis oc- 
casionally. 

At that period you said, ''If I had an 
automobile, I think I could send for my 
friends once in a while! Why, it would 
be half my pleasure in having a car to 
put at the disposal of my friends!" 

Polly agreed with you. 

You continued: "It isn't as if automo- 
biles could catch pneumonia — " 

"I don't think you and I could be as 
thoughtless and selfish as some of our rich 
friends, could we?" Polly remarked. 

''No," you asserted warmly. "It isn't 



50 I Should Say So I 

that we put ourselves up as being saintly, 
or any rot like that, but — " 

'^No," agreed Polly. ''I know what you 
mean — we simply aren't built that way. 
We shouldn't be happy if we thought some 
of our poorer friends had to struggle up 
to our house to dinner in the subway when 
we had a perfectly good motor car!" 

That was five years ago. 

The awakening of Helena Ritchie was a 
deep, snoreless sleep compared to yours. 

It's a cinch to put a dream-car at the 
disposal of your friends. 

Well, anyhow! 

The time arrived when you could not 
exactly afford but you could at least buy, 
a car. 

From the moment you are bitten by the 
great Klaxon-horned Gasolene Bug the 
motor car takes precedence of everything 
else — home ties, duty, the hope of a future 
life, all are forgotten for the time being. 

Your library table is littered with speci- 
fications, booklets, and photos of every 
kind of car; so is your desk. Your over- 
coat pockets bulge with them. You spend 



Auto Fois—Auto Moeurs 51 

hours which ought to be spent at your 
desk, standing around on the glassy floors 
of the motor harems amongst the potted 
palms listening to the he sirens softly 
honking of their wares. 

You even come sneaking back at night, 
when the shops are closed, and gaze hyp- 
notized through the Pittsburgh panes at 
the car of your dreams; then back again 
after breakfast with the fanatical enthu- 
siasm of the Wagnerite at Bayreuth. 

While Polly is trying the seats of the 
smart town car up near the window, one 
of the Benzine Brummels is telling you 
sojnething beginning with, "I guess you've 
heard this one. Stop me if you have — " 

This is done to rest your brain from 
the exertion of trying to understand why 
the tail-light is not attached to the radi- 
ator fan. 

Otherwise these cataracts of ^'differen- 
tials," ^'multiple disk," and ''cone-clutches," 
"timing-gears" and "splash systems," would 
rock your mentality and perhaps make it 
turn turtle and sink at the dock. 

They speak kindly of other cars, and 



52 I Should Say So / 

tell you in what essentials they are lacking, 
not knocking, mind you — or only a little 
in one cylinder. 

They pass debonairly over the stupid 
and minor considerations of construction 
and leap, as it were, with a glad cry of 
home-coming to the important points like 
the cigar-lighters and the initials on the 
door panels. There is where they are on 
safe ground and can become eloquent. 

They show you scrap-books full of tes- 
timonial letters from regular business men 
— regular fellers who sit at desks and have 
telephones and paper-weights and office- 
boys and things — letters written on bona- 
fide typewriters, and they have "PXG" 
down in the corners just like real letters. 

These men write and tell them how 
crazy they are about their new cars — how 
they would rather be wrecked in one of 
their cars than ride safely in any other 
make. You can't help being impressed. 

You put off telling them that you are 
going to buy a second-hand car as long 
as you can, and when you tell them what 
a piker you are, you are awfully surprised 




^^.7^ 



"blinkensopis selling this because 
he >a^ants a more powerful car" 



Auto Fois—Auto Moeurs 55 

they don't throw you bodily through the 
plate-glass windows. 

No, it is really so — they still talk to 
you as if you were an out-and-out white 
citizen. These gentlemanly salesmen even 
gloss over your bad break to the extent 
of being willing to actually sell you a 
second-hand car themselves. They speak 
of them as ^'rebuilt" cars. They are re- 
built in the same degree that your blue 
serge suit is rebuilt when you send it 
around to the tailors to be sponged and 
pressed. (Which, by the way, means 
pressed.) "Rebuilt cars" are covered by 
the same guarantee as their new cars. 
Which guarantee is worth fully eight cents 
in Confederate money. 

They show you and Polly the ''rebuilt" 
car. A distinct bargain. Polly had it on 
the tip of her tongue to say, ''Why did she 
leave her last place?" when Brummel an- 
ticipated her by volunteering, "Blinkensop 
is selling this because he wants a more 
powerful car." 

"I thought you said this was a powerful 
car!" you ventured, a shade uneasily. 



56 I Should Say So I 

'Towerful! All the power you'll ever 
want, my boy! We'll take him up Fort 
George Hill, eh. Bud?" This to the dem- 
onstrator, who shifts on to his other foot 
and smiles, ''Nothing to it!" 

You feel rebuked. 

You and Polly are given a demonstra- 
tion. 

The psychology of the trade starts psych- 
ing at the moment you take your seat in 
the car. The instant the wheels turn you 
are a goner! 

You are now the best salesman they have! 
You sell yourself the car! You root for 
that car as if it were something you had 
invented yourself. You are only too will- 
ing to be convinced of its perfections — only 
too anxious to believe all those Indians tell 
you in their salaried enthusiasm. 

An awful clattering underneath your 
feet, that in later years of experience would 
clearly indicate frazzled bearings, you are 
now eager to have explained away as noth- 
ing but the sweet purr of perfect mech- 
anism. 

You sit on the edge of the seat, nerves 




" THIS CAR ISN'T SOLD IS IT ? " 



Auto Fois—Auto Moeurs 59 

taut, inwardly challenging these men to 
say anything nasty about their own goods! 
Their own? Yours! Nothing short of 
spontaneous combustion or the complete 
destruction of all the roads in the United 
States can stop you from buying that car! 

You clutch the leather arm-rests with 
the fierce joy of ownership, and cry, '^Gee, 
some boat!" 

^We could a-done that hill just as easy 
on high!" grins the wicked demonstrator 
as he looks around for your approval. 

^'When can I have it?" you hiss, hardly 
recognizing your own voice. 

''By the way," says the salesman, doubt- 
fully, to the wicked demonstrator, ''this 
car isn't sold, is it?" 

"Oh, my God!" 

"Oh, no, it's all right — I was thinking 
of that 191 1 runabout of Johnson's — no, 
it's all right." 

"Oh!" 

You nearly swallowed your Adam's 
apple. 

"It will take about two weeks to paint 
it," says the cunning salesman. "You can 
have it any old color you like." 



60 I Should Say So I 

You and Polly would like dark blue. 

''In that case I'm afraid it would take 
from four to five weeks, as they have to 
scrape it down to the bone!" 

''Gosh, I don't want to wait all that 
time!" you groan. 

He knew you wouldn't. 

"Well, then, why not have it crimson?" 

"Why, it's crimson now," you say, glanc- 
ing quickly over the side. 

"Yes, something on that shade — it would 
be stunning!" 

"Yes, I guess that would be bully — 
wouldn't it, Polly?" 

The curtain is lowered to indicate the 
lapse of two weeks. 

The car is at your door with the 
chauffeur. 

The same salesman that stung you with 
the car stung you also with the chauffeur. 
The lemon and the lemonade. 

The next step is to get a couple of inno- 
cent friends to go with you to drive. In 
certain ways owning your first car is like 
being in love. You want everybody to 
meet the girl. 




I DON'T KNOAV AVHAT IT IS 
BUT DO IT" 



Auto Fois—Auto Moeurs 63 

You and Polly and the two innocent 
friends start gaily up Broadway in the 
car. You have decided to go to Yonkers, 
a moderate though eccentric ambition. At 
about One Hundredth Street something 
happens. You don't know what. Neither 
does the chauffeur. But the beautiful 
crimson chariot refuses to proceed, and 
punctuates its refusal with extraordinary 
noises. 

The chauffeur starts it again. Hope is 
renewed — bang! Stop again. Chauffeur 
gets out again and lifts up the lid of the 
trunk at the front end and fumbles around. 
Nothing. Conversation expires. You 
laugh hysterically and remark that some- 
thing must be the matter. Chauffeur says 
it's all of that, and that you will all have 
to get out and let him get the car home 
when he can. That get it home he will, 
he never having been towed home in his 
professional life! 

As there doesn't seem to be anything else 
to do, you all get out and go home in the 
subway. The friends murmur something 
about enjoying the ride, and you mutter 



64 I Should Say So ! 

something about having to try it again 
some time. 

After trying in vain to get that car out 
of town or even past One Hundred and 
Sixteenth Street, it dawns on you that some 
one has unloaded an acid fruit on you. 

The chauffeur (w^hose salary you paid, 
by the way, during the two weeks the car 
was being painted, as otherwise you might 
not be able to hold him and there being 
only one chauflfeur in the city at the time) 
suggests you letting him take down the 
engine. You say, ^'I don't know what it is, 
but do it." So he takes down the engine, 
whose piston-rings, had you but known 
about such things, were draped around the 
pistons with the same mathematical pre- 
cision that the rope rings fall around the 
stake in the game of ring-toss on ship- 
board. 

When friend chauffeur had finished put- 
ting the engine together again, he had 
enough parts left over to make a cheap 
vacuum cleaner and a pair of Colonial 
andirons. 

You finally get a real car, but you never 



Auto Fois—Auto Moeurs 65 

forgive that agreeable young salesman who 
sold you the first one. You watch for him 
in the streets. You wouldn't, of course, 
want to run over him. At least, not all 
over him. 

It seems now, since you've had several 
cars, that you can't remember not having 
one. Polly says you act that way. In 
what particular way? ^'Oh," says Polly, 
"for instance, the Hallecks are coming to 
dinner to-night, and you hadn't thought 
to send our car for them." 

^'Well, I'll send for them if you want 
me to, Polly." 

'^No, I don't particularly care. I was 
just thinking the way you and I used to 
talk when we didn't have a car." 

''I get you, Polly; but I thought I 
wouldn't send Peter out to-night, as we've 
been using him pretty steadily these last 
few nights." 

That's one phase of the thing. 

Then if you send your car around for 
some people six times running, and for 
some idiotic reason you carelessly forget 
to send for them the seventh time, the 



66 I Should Say So ! 

frost is on the pumpkin, Jessie dear, the 
next time you see them. Which shows 
you the truth of the old adage, ^'Never 
start anything you can't continue forever." 



/ Should Say So ! 



CREAM OR LEMON f 




/ Should Say Soi 



Cream or Lemon ^ 



r 






YOU don't look the part, Paul 
sighed Polly, as she regarded her 
husband critically. 

''What part, dear lady?" He paused in 
the act of removing from his overcoat a 
Milky Way of white flakes off his buck- 
skin gloves. He waited with sarcastic, 
elevated eyebrows. 

"Why, a more or less celebrated poet, 
dear. Your hair isn't Busterbrownish and 
you haven't any Colonel Harvey spectacles, 
and — well, you look quite clean!" 

"Well, I really haven't time to grow the 
hair of get the Colonel Harvey's; but if 
it will do any good, I can scrabble around 
in the fireplace and roll under the kitchen 
sink for a few minutes — " He made a 
movement as if to carry out his suggestion. 

"Paul!" — Polly grabbed him by the arm 



10 I Should Say So ! 

— ^'I was only joking — I love you, even if 
you are clean — I was only thinking that 
as the Bostocks are giving this tea to meet 
you, it is rather a pity you haven't a poet 
make-up, even if it were only some Le 
Gallienne hair — yours is so Lyendeckerish 
— you might even be an ad for a two-for-a- 
quarter collar. Your forehead doesn't bulge 
anywhere peculiarly — who will believe that 
you are Paul Pantoum Punctual with that 
five per cent, grade forehead?" 

''You really can't tell nowadays from a 
man's appearance what his job is — Con- 
gressmen look like Taxi Drivers, Head 
Waiters look like Eminent Jurists, Artists 
look like Stockbrokers, and so on. Still, 
if you say so, I can take a notary public 
with me and have him witness my sig- 
nature on 'Hyacinth and Huyler's.' I 
could pass 'em around — " 

"By the way," said Polly, darting over 
to a large bowl on the table and scratching 
around in it amongst the cards, "what was 
their number? — Oh, yes — 16 East — Come 
on! It's just time to get there late. What 
on earth are you doing, Paul? — undress- 
ing?" 



Cream or Lem on ? 71 

^^No," panted Paul, as he unbuttoned 
his overcoat, then his morning coat and 
finally his waistcoat; '^just taking good- 
breath before — uh — I nail myself up. Gee, 
this vest has shrunk!" 

''Ha! You're getting — " 

"I'm not, either. Remember, this is the 
last tea you get me to — the finish — I'm 
through teathing — " 

Paul and Polly go up in the elevator 
at the ''Arch-Ducal Archways" with two 
frock coats and a morning coat, who all 
say in quick succession with a mixture of 
defiance and reticence: "Mrs. Bostock!" 

Then they eye each other with expres- 
sions that say, "Mrs. Bostock, indeed! Are 
you the sort she asks to her teas? I can't 
say offhand what it is about you that dis- 
pleases me, but I am fully persuaded that 
I shouldn't care to know you, really!" 

One of the frock coats was an English- 
man, and his eager little heart was near 
bursting with bromidiums. 

To him, the elevator seemed to crawl. 

Mrs. Bostock had hired a train an- 
nouncer out of a job to bawl out the names 



12 I Should Say So! 

of her guests, many of whom had never 
heard their names called out so stentori- 
ously before except by their better halves 
in a mood. 

The hostess evidently missed hearing 
Captain Swash's name called, because 
when she greeted him she foozled the 
approach. This gave him his first chance 
to unload. ''You don't recognize me in 
this, Imeantosay, dim religious light!" 
"Oh, Captain Swash — " leaning toward 
him like a coy manatee — ''You mean dim 
irreligious light!" she whispered naughtily 
and wittily. 

Paul hung about the entrance into the 
main cage a moment waiting for Polly. 
He decided that she had probably caught 
her hair on something, so he thought he 
would make a dash for it. 

He breathed his name to the human 
howitzer to be exploded over the heads 
of the innocent bystanders, and entered. 

Mrs. Bostock leapt at him as a hungry 
lady manatee leaps at a mackerel. 

"Oh, here's my lion! Come over here. 
I want you to meet— Where is that girl? 
— Oh, here she is!" 




c^^^ 



"YOU MEAN DIM IRRELIGIOUS LIGHT!" 

SHE WHISPERED NAUGHTILY AND WITTILY 



Cream or Lemon F 75 

The '^girl" was a slip of forty — in spin- 
ach-green corduroy and scarab tippet, and 
a large swaying meteoric mass of tarnished 
zinc and colored glass which she wore sus- 
pended on what ought to have been her 
chest. It made Paul think of the bumpers 
tugboats wear to protect their wishbones 
from docks and things. She had backed 
a curly-haired infant up against a radiator 
and was talking him to a frazzle, while 
he smiled and smiled, although scorching. 
The infant was new to teas — he had some- 
thing to do with a magazine. Paul heard 
later that the poor youngster was abso- 
lutely without experience, and that they 
used him to try manuscripts and illustra- 
tions on, to decide about accepting or re- 
jecting them. 

^'Eloise, dear, I want you to meet this 
distinguished person, Mr. Paul Pantoum 
Punctual, the Poet — Miss McCann, of 
Marblehead." 

''Tell him I'm an Interviewest, Kathar- 
ine," Miss McCann pouted. 

''Yes, indeed, and the cleverest one in 
New York." 



16 I Should Say So ! 

^^Thanks, dear." Miss McCann seemed 
to imply in her tone that Mrs. Bostock 
was rather stingy with her praise. 

''I'm sure you two will have lots in 
common — " Mrs. Bostock waddled away 
genially. 

The magazine infant who was the Least 
Common Advisor to his firm, with a "too 
good to be true" look on his face, escaped 
from his radiator on high speed, nearly 
wrecking a marble bust of a forward young 
flapper who invited all comers to sample 
a couple of marble cherries she held be- 
tween her teeth. 

Miss McCann, coming from the hasty- 
pudding zone, said ''copperation," ''Otter- 
mobile," "Fahther," and "tunnips." She 
kept looking up at Paul through her eye- 
brows like one of Landseer's stag hounds. 
It was an expression she had practiced. 
It was intended to loreleize any man. Paul 
didn't get the loreleization at all. 

It left him with his normal number of 
vibrations. 

"Now, try another — that was a flivver!" 
said Paul rudely. 




I'M SURE YOU TWO WILL 
HAVE LOTS IN COMMON—" 



Cream or I^emon ? 19 

"What do you mean?" asked Miss Mc- 
Canri, knowing exactly what he meant. 

"That attempt at a devastating glance 
you just gave me. If you insist on the 
T's being dotted and the Ts crossed." 

"Well, of all the — Aren't you a terrible 
person!" shivered the lady of the zinc 
bumper. "I don't believe any woman 
would be safe near you — you — you Cave 
Man!" 

"Reassure yourself, madam — any woman 
who wears a ring like a Christmas cracker 
on her index finger is as safe with me 



as—" 



"O! I think I'll pass you on to some 
one else — you're not anywhere near civil- 
ized — really — Miss Babistair, I want to 
inflict Mr. Punctual on you!" 

Miss Babistair dimpled and sidled up to 
Paul. "Hajaduh?" 

Paul wondered if she was one of the 
women one ofifers to shake hands with or 
the other sort. By the time he had de- 
cided it was too late. 

"I am fairly well, and thank you for 
asking." 



80 I Should Say So ! 

^Thu, phu — you're funny. I mest have 
seen your work somewhere — in the maga- 
zines I fancy — You make pictures or 
something — I've been abroad so mech of 
my life I haven't kept up with you over 
heah." 

^Tou're English?" 

^'No — Amerrrican." 

'^Over here incog?" 

"Whatchoo mean?" 

"Oh, nothing." 

"Tell me, you are an illustrator, are 
you not?" 

"No; worse than that. A Poet." 

"Fancy! How nice! Oh, have you 
met Mr. Ponctshl?" This to a foreign- 
looking flapper who was passing in a 
Puma-like manner. Foreign Flapper 
pauses and shakes hands gummily with 
Paul. Miss Babistair sneaks. 

"Miss Babistair didn't mention your 
name-er — " 

"No. She doesn't know me. Perhaps 
that is why. My name is Miss Pureleaf." 

"Chicago?" 

"Sh! Yes. I live in Paris. Mrs. Bos- 
tock has the only salon in New York." 




OLIVER HERFORD JOINS THEM, 

STIRRING HIS CUP OF TEA WITH A LADY- FINGER 



Cream or Lemon ? 83 

''So several people have told me. From 
the looks of that table of decanters and 
bottles one might say saloon. Have you 
had punch?" 

''Rather — several! Oliver Herford 
passed the word around that it's full of 
absinthe — that keeps the New 'Rochelle 
and Flushing bunch away from it." 

"Oliver Herford! the vice-president of 
the Herford Manufacturing Company?" 
Paul is trying to be amusing. 

"No, stupid! Oliver Herford, the wit, 
artist and poet." 

"Oh, Mr. Ford, come over here." She 
grabbed Jim Ford, the Sardonic, by the 
sleeve and introduced Paul to him. 
"Here's a man who doesn't know who 
Oliver Herford is." 

"He's stringing you. Everybody knows 
the famous Kittenologist — the originator 
of the proverb, 'The more haste the less 
speed.' Why^" 

"I confess," laughed Paul. "I was jes' 
foolin'. All the stories they don't credit 
to Dan'l Webster and Abe Line — By the 
way, Mr. Ford, Miss Pureleaf tells me 



84 I Should Say So J 



that Mrs. Bostock has the one real salon 



in town." 



'Oh, yes," whispers Ford. ''Every 
woman who can corral three stockbrokers, 
an advertising man and a Fifty-seventh 
Street dressmaker has the one salon." 

A dark gent just then made his way to 
the piano. 

''Oh, gosh! there goes that wedge-faced 
wap to the box again!" hoarsely whispers 
a stout old lady in a bodice all covered 
with sequins and glass beads. 

"Who in heaven's name is that?" Paul 
hisses to Jim Ford. 

"That old woman gotten up like the 
electric sign for Spriggle's Nearmint Gum? 
That is Mrs. Hugglesby, of Omaha, grand- 
parents members of the Brook Farm gang 
in New England, author of 'The Care and 
Preservation of Our Mother Tongue.' 
Hullo, Oliver!" Oliver Herford joins 
them, stirring his cup of tea with a lady- 
finger. 

Oliver remarks in his diffident manner, 
"Isn't that thing tiresome the fellow's 
singing — that Caruso piece, 'Down in 
Mobile.' " 



Cream or Lemon ? 85 



Miss Pureleaf says, ''You mean 'Donne 
e Mobile,' Mr. Herford." 

"Oh, perh^s that was what I meant." 

"Oh, Mr. Punctual, come over here." 
— His hostess' voice. 

Paul feels as helpless as an infant cater- 
pillar in a nest of hungry ants. He seemed 
to have left his will-power with his hat 
and coat as he followed her through the 
crowd to the other end of the room. 

"I want you to meet — " Mrs. Bostock 
smiled helplessly — "Now I know your 
name as well as I — Your face is as familiar 
as—" 

"Mrs. Punctual," said Polly with ma- 
licious animal magnanimity. 

"Mrs. Punc— Mrs. Punc— Oh !— Oh !— 
Am I getting fatuous as well as fat — 
introducing you to your own — Oh! Oh!" 
She fled. 

Polly smiled up at Paul. "How do you 
do?" 

"Pm pleased to meet you. We ought 
to have a lot in common." 

"Yes," said Polly, serenely, "with a 
house on it — but we haven't — " 



/ 



86 I Should Say So : 



''So youVe already succumbed to the 
Repartee Fever! Let's beat it — " 

On the way home Polly pretended not 
to hear Paul as he muttered strange, un- 
connected sentences to himself. It sounded 
something like this : 

''Mrs. Bostock has the only real salon 
in town." 

"Yes, we live on the dreadful West Side, 
but it doesn't matter where one lives in 
New York these days." 

"Well, turkey trotting is certainly health- 
ier exercise than bridge." 

"My husband doesn't approve of my 
taking lessons in these new dances from 
a professional." 

"We live in Nutley for the children's 
sake." 

"Life is made so much easier for one 
living abroad." 

"New York's sky-line is really beauti- 
ful." 

"I don't believe in facial massage. It 
loosens the flesh." 

"We let our chauffeur wear what he 
pleases — he is an excellent machinist — he 
can fix anything that goes wrong." 



Cream or Lemon ? 81 

''Don't attempt to take the spot out your- 
self — send it right to the cleaner's — they 
don't have to dip the whole thing these 
days." 

"Did you ever see the streets in such a 
condition! It's just graft — yes, Tammany/' 

''Polly, don't ask me to go to another 
tea with you." 

"Really, Paul, I thought you seemed to 
be having the time of your life with that 
swarthy young thing in the corner." 

"Pooh! I had to be civil to the crea- 
ture." 

"You will notice, Paul, that I am not 
finding fault with you for leaving me to 
come in by myself. I might have meant 
something as Mrs. Paul Pantoum Punc- 
tual, but 'Mrs. Punctual' left them cold." 

"Sorry, but I thought you were never 
coming." 

"At any rate," continued Paul, "this is 
positively my Adelinapatti at any tea. I 
have spoken!" 

This was as they were entering their 
own apartment. 

"What's this?" said Polly, picking up 
an envelope from the hall table. 



88 I Should Say So I 

"A clever way to find out would be to 
open it." Paul was rather husbandish. 

^'Mrs. C. Lonn at home March loth 
from four to seven/' read Polly. 

She started to tear the card up. 

Paul laid a detaining hand on hers. 

''Hold on! You may want to remember 
the address." 



/ Should Say So J 



UNTERESTING PEOPLE 




/ Should Say So I 



Unteresting People 

I. A great man who has a job he likes. 
II. A wonderful example of cool-headedness. 
III. A baby who looks like any baby^ butisnt. 

MATTHEW J. PILLWEATHER 

LITTLE do we all realize the history 
of some of the commonest house- 
^ hold articles — the romance of the 
humble parlor match, for instance. Who 
amongst us all has not at some time in 
his or her life had occasion to use that 
little wooden beacon? 

Is there a child in these United States 
who has not played with them when 
Mother's back was turned? 

Is there anything that enters more into 
our daily life than the simple match? In 
the parlor, the kitchen, the camp, the 
smoking car, the subway, the theater, the 



92 I Should Say So I 

street, even the avenues — everywhere un- 
der the sun you will find the little fibrous 
torch in use! 

Well, then. You'll all agree to that. 
Now when the parlor match was first in- 
vented suppose the head had been put on 
the wrong end! Can you not imagine the 
cries of baffled rage floating up into the 
empyrean baby blue when millions of 
match users tried in vain to strike their 
matches! 

This didn't happen. I only say sup- 
pose! 

If this stupendous blunder had occurred, 
there is one man in the country who would 
have been able to rectify it. He would 
have seen immediately what the trouble 
was, and with the simplicity of genius 
would have recalled all the matches that 
had been put on the market, scraped the 
heads off and put them on the proper ends. 
That man is Matthew J. Pillweather, of 
White River Junction, Vermont — or N. 
H. He is alive to-day at the age of eighty- 
two, and is still occupying the same posi- 
tion of trust he has filled for over sixty- 




MATTHEW J. PILL WEATHER 

"Who for sixty-three years has filled the respon- 
sible position of assistant postal-card reader in 
the postoffice of his native town — also a genius. 



Unteresting People 95 

three years, as assistant postal-card reader 
in the post-office of his native town. 

Which only goes to show something or 
other. 

AUGUSTUS G. PEST 

One day, while on a tour of inspection 
of the subway in company with no less 
person that President Higginbotham him- 
self, the writer happened to notice a ticket- 
seller in one of the booths. 

'^Yes," smiled President Higginbotham; 
'4hat is a case in which I take a great 
deal of pride! It will pay you to watch 
him a moment!" 

I stepped closer to the booth and 
watched the man. I could hardly credit 
my eyesight. Inside of twelve minutes 
there must have been three people who 
bought tickets at that window, and not 
a trace of nervousness or a single falter- 
ing movement on the part of the ticket- 
seller! 

The tickets were pulled off the strips, 
passed through the window, the money 
taken in and in one instance change for 



96 I Should Say So ! 

a dime made — and not one mistake. I 
reeled with excitement. Higginbotham 
helped me to a seat on a bench. And 
fanning me with a copy of The American 
Magazine, which, by the way, he says is 
extremely useful, he told me the story of 
the ticket-seller. The following remark- 
able story speaks for itself: 

Augustus G. Pest was born in New York 
City, in 1850. 



STARK N. AKED 

In Slag Heap Notch, Pennsylvania, 
there lives what most people would pass 
by as an ordinary person. And as usual, 
most people would be dead wrong. 

To the casual observer Stark N. Aked 
is no different from millions of other 
Americans. There doesn't seem to be any 
outward sign to indicate that he is unique 
or remarkable. But he is. Of all our 
hundred million inhabitants he is the most 
interesting and wonderful. Bar none. 

In the first place, Dr. Lincoln Litmus, 
the family physician, stated professionally, 




AUGUSTUS G. PEST 
An extraordinary ticket-seller in the New York 
subway. He can sell three tickets in twelve 
minutes without making a mistake. 



Unteresting People 99 

before wet-nurses, that it was the most 
perfectly formed child he had ever seen! 
But the really unanswerable evidence of 
Stark's claim to being the most absolutely 
peerless person in all the world is the 
voluntary admission of Mr. and Mrs. 
Aked. 



^^^ 



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Unteresting People 103 



The Trihulatio7is of an Illustrator 
Told in Pictures, in a Letter and a Reply 

THE LETTER 

Mr. James Montgomery Flagg. 

Dear Sir: — We have had several discus- 
sions in our family in regard to your pen- 
and-ink drawings in the ''Associated Sun- 
day Magazine" of December 22, 191 2, 
entitled "We Can't Afford Presents This 
Year." If not too much trouble, I will 
deem it favor if you will kindly forward 
your meaning. Thanking you in advance, 
I am 

Most respectfully yours. 



December 30, 191 2. 

THE REPLY 

33 West Sixty-Seventh St,, 
New York, Jan, 17, 1913, 

My Dear Mrs — 

Your kind inquiry concerning the mean- 
ing of my cartoon in the Christmas num- 



104 I Should Say So I 

ber of the ^'Associated Sunday Magazines" 
is received, and I can readily understand 
your perplexity. Evidently you did not see 
the series of pictures, of which this is but 
a part. Also, I regret to say, the editors 
of the magazine failed to carry out my 
wishes: I told them to print the true title 
of the series, ^'Christmas in Many Lands," 
on the tablecloth, to the left of the cham- 
pagne bottle, in the picture. This they did 
not do. 

The first cartoon of this series, it may 
interest you to know, was my first pub- 
lished drawing. It appeared in the ''Ap- 
peal to Reason Magazine," in July, 1880. 
This picture showed "Christmas on the 
Deep," and while the title of the series 
may not strictly cover nautical scenes, yet 
I felt that I was justified in using the title 
"Christmas on the Deep," because the ship 
I drew was a very rapid one, and, barring 
bubonic plague or other accidents to the 
machinery, was sure to be in port by the 
time of publication. 

That picture showed the Captain made 
up as Santa Claus, tossing filberts over the 



Unteresting People 105 

rail for the Cabin Boys to dive for, teach- 
ing carols to the Second Cabin Stewards, 
hearing the Able Seamen say their prayers, 
and kissing them good night. The crew 
had hung up their stockings on the yard- 
arms, and the rigging and funnels were fes- 
tooned with holly and mistletoe. The cook 
was trying to catch the Second Officer 
under the mistletoe — with a potato-masher. 
Indeed, the whole scene reflected the sim- 
ple gaities of Jack at Sea in the Yuletide 
season. 

It may surprise you to know that many 
readers contended that this picture did 
not really represent '^Christmas in Many 
Lands," because, although the sailors were 
of many nationalities, I had left out the 
Javanese. But that was intentional. I was 
coming to the Javanese later. 

My Javanese cartoon was No. 2 in the 
^^Christmas in Many Lands" series. It 
appeared in '^Godey's Lady's Book" in 
1863. It was called ^'Christmas in Many 
Lands," again showing the wealth of ideas 
possessed by an artist who was fortunate 
enough to count many Art Editors among 
his personal friends. 



106 I Should Say So! 

The drawing depicted that famous and 
terrible St. Valentine's Day when the 
Moke of Mocha, accompanied on the bas- 
soon by that doughty warrior, Young 
Hyson, committed the Sack of Java. This 
picture clearly showed the unsettled con- 
dition of afifairs in Java before the intro- 
duction of the tgg. 

In the foreground Young Hyson is seen 
knocking King Cafifeine IV. of Java on the 
bean, thereby giving him grounds for com- 
plaint. • 

Some people wrote in to me about this 
picture. They did not understand why it 
should be entitled ^'Christmas in Many 
Lands," as the Sack of Java was known to 
have occurred on St. Valentine's Day. But, 
as you will have already guessed, this was 
done to make it harder. 

No. 3 of this series was published in 
Park & Tilford's Catalogue, in 1910. It 
showed ''A Quaker Christmas" in all its 
pristine glory. The patriarchal old father 
of the Quaker family had been celebrating 
Guy Fawkes Day, and was feeling his oats. 
This brings us naturally and gracefully to 



Un teres ting People 101 

the remark that this drawing was part of 
a serial. Now, as you are doubtless aware, 
it is the custom among the Quakers, and 
has been so from time immemorial, to kill 
and eat each other on Christmas eve. This 
rite they consider to be a purely personal 
and family matter, and nobody else's busi- 
ness. Any member of a Quaker family who 
is not et one year, is it next year.^ 

I pointed a moral in this picture to those 
who may be tempted to use oatmeal to ex- 
cess; for oatmeal is a good servant, but a 
terrible master. The old Quaker father 
had overindulged in oatmeal. He came 
reeling home, reeking with the noxious 
fumes of that cosmetic. Not knowing what 
he did, he mistook an innocent seamstress 
for a member of his own family. She was 
sewing oats on Otis Skinner. While she 
was thus engaged, he sidled up to her and 
slew her. In my picture I show the old 
man devouring her second joint. There is 
a look of doubt upon the fine old, simple 
face, as though he wondered whether all 
was for the best. 

Now we come to the last cartoon — ^the 



108 I Should Say So I 

one of which you wrote me. This picture 
shows richly dressed people sitting in an 
extravagant restaurant, lavishly eating an 
expensive lunch, and drinking champagne. 
The caption was: "We Can't Afford Pres- 
ents This Year." 

Not everyone has had the common cour- 
tesy to write to me for an explanation of 
this thing. Thousands upon thousands have 
gone on in the routine of their daily life, 
with the problem presented by this car- 
toon gnawing at their vitals, yet they have 
been too inert to write me. 

I thank you. And yet I find myself 
pausing on the threshold of this disclosure. 
Madam, how shall I unfold this ghastly 
story? . . . 

The girl who sits in the center, facing 
you so calmly, is, I regret to say, the leader 
of a notorious band of Nihilists. And the 
waiter without a head — what of him? To 
the casual observer he is like any other 
waiter without a head. Not so, however! 
He is really Nutoff, the most terrible as- 
sassin, murderer, cut-throat, highbinder, 
bookbinder, spellbinder, and Hoi PoUoi 
in all Vladivostok. 



Vnteresting People 109 

The girl Nihilist has lured the man and 
woman with whom she sits at table to this 
cafe! And who, think you, is them? He 
is the young Szarsparilla of Russia — czar- 
castically speaking, she is his wife. They 
have left their son and daughter, the young 
Czardine and Czardonix, and come to this 
caviar den, where the worst Vodkas in 
Paris assemble. 

But as I approach the awful denouement 
my nerve fails me! How can I continue? 
How can I tell you of that awful night: 
how the waves rolled in over the foot- 
board; of the feverish Northern lights, and 
the sad low call of the penguin to its mate, 
the penwiper; the awful picture of her, as 
she lay there, half in and half out, with that 
look upon her face, as the sawdust rose 
and rose until it touched her moist red 
lips — it is seared upon the tabloids of my 
memory. That was the night my hair 
turned gray — the night when the raven 
dragged its ink-stained wing across the face 
of the taxi-driver who had played his last 
set of tennis in the dusty courtyards of the 
Alhambra. Peace . . . Peace . . . 



110 I Should Say So I 

It was morning. . . . The bald-headed 
Paregoric, perched on his eyrie on the 
blasted tamarack, looked down upon them 
as they lay there, cold and still — hatless, 
shoeless . . . footless! 



That, then, is the answer! 



In closing, I wish to tell you that I shall 
hereafter have all my cartoons in connec- 
tion with the ^'Christmas in Many Lands" 
series printed by the Butterick Company, 
on pattern paper. Pattern paper is, as you 
know, perforated ; this will enable everyone 
to see through the pictures. 

Yours very truly, 

James Montgomery Flagg. 



/ Should Say So I 



THEATERS 




/ Should Say Sol 



Theaters 

DON'T tell me you've never been to 
the theater! Get ou-u-t! Honest? 
What do you know about that? Tell 
you what it's like? Sure! 

If you've never been to a show it doesn't 
make any difference which one you pick 
out. You'll enjoy it, no matter how punk- 
escent it is. 

Which is true of almost everything you 
do for the first time — except going to the 
dentist, and being mistaken for the con- 
ductor. You don't enjoy those things until 
the second time. 

Don't be absurd? Huh! One has to die 
quickly in order not to be, and even then 
one may be funny. 

Collect the morning papers after the first 
night of some play and read the criticisms 
carefully. Don't balance the papers against 



114 I Should Say So I 

the fern dish and read with one eye and 
drink your coffee with the other. Wait till 
after breakfast, and go to it with what they 
tell you is your mind. 

The ''Daily Toast" will say something 
like this: 

'' 'The Moll-Buzzer' leapt into instant 
popularity last night. It is the play of the 
season. Al and Gus Thomas are sore this 
A. M. because they didn't write it. The au- 
thor, up to last night entirely unknown, is 
to be congratulated on a masterly work 
which has in it none of the faults of the 
novice, nay, indeed, combines the construc- 
tion of Pinero, the wit of Shaw, and the 
dramatic power of Ibsen, with the popular 
note of Geo. Cohan. 

"This play of the underworld should 
draw crowds for two or three decades. The 
situations are original and hair-raising as 
well as being true to life. A representative 
audience sat breathless on the edge of its 
seats — one moment agonized with dread and 
suspense, the next moment rocking and 
writhing with the abandonment of convuls- 
ive mirth! The cast was extraordinarily 




y.^^y^ 



DON'T BALANCE THE PAPERS AGAINST THE FERN DISH 
AND READ WITH ONE EYE AND DRINK YOUR 
COFFEE WITH THE OTHER 



Theaters 111 

fine, including that sterling actor, Haddock 
Wart^ — another vindication of the good old 
stock company training! — who gave a rarely 
splendid performance in a part that re- 
quired the finished art of just such an in- 
telligent actor. 

''He was a delight to the eye in the pic- 
turesque costume of a N. Y. detective, and 
his portrayal of that sweet old gentleman 
was delightful, as he brought out every 
shading of the character — the benevolence, 
the asceticism, the dreamy gentleness, and 
the old-world courtesy. 

"Here at last is a play worth seeing over 
and over again! Take your family; take 
your regiment; take your ward! They will 
thank you with tears of joy!" 

'Well," you sparkle, "that must be some 
play — what? Let's go!" 

Hold on! Read the "Morning Marma- 
lade"! Here! 

"Another flivver added to the season's 
long list of casualties! Any manager who 
would produce such a hodge-podge of stale 
banalities as 'The Moll-Buzzer' deserves to 
be redrawn from an early tintype and pub- 



118 I Should Say So ! 

lished! The underbred pup who collected, 
pinched, and signed his name to this shovel- 
ful of chaos deserves to be sent to Flushing 
for life! We have sat through some awful 
evenings in our sad career, but, ye gods and 
whitebait! Why, I even tried to sleep by 
counting sheep jumping over a gate! The 
snores of those of the audience who had not 
actually died in their seats kept me pitifully 
conscious! 

''The cast was well suited to the produc- 
tion, being a round-up of the waifs of the 
Rialto, and of all these shabby and flabby 
hams, the worst was Haddock Wart! How 
that superannuated old freight-car tourist 
ever persuades any manager, even Einstein, 
to place him in any play is beyond our reck- 
oning, even in a thinking part — but as a 
principal his unpleasant presence before the 
footlights is an insult to the cheesiest audi- 
ence! The 'Moll-Buzzer' when it goes to- 
night to the storehouse will outrank the 
rankest of the failures of a generation." 

"For the love of Modjeska! How can 
two papers have such different opinions?" 

"My boy, my bo-o-oy! Whoever said 
they had? Read between the lines!" 



Theaters 119 

'Well, what am I to think?" 

^'You're not supposed to. Just ask some- 
one, whose opinion to you is worthless, what 
he thinks of the play, and if he thinks it's 
poor get seats immediately!" 

You go to the box office, in your inno- 
cence, to get seats. There is a man ahead 
of you, and you listen to the talk. It goes 
like this: 

''Two seats for to-night." 

The gent who has the seats to sell is pro- 
tected by a bronze grill. You understand 
why this is later on. 

Gent gives the customer a quick sizing- 
up glance and sees that his suit is made out 
of wool off a regular sheep and not the 
Mississippi breed that gives cotton. If the 
customer had worn one of the latter or had 
skewered his bow tie with a scarf pin, the 
box office gent would have asked, "Balcony 
or orchestra?" 

In this case he says nothing, but looks 
through a bunch of tickets, picks out two, 
puts them up to their waists in an envelope, 
and pushes them under the grill. 

"Where are they?" 



120 I Should Say So ! 

"Fifteenth row — very good seats." 

''How many rows are there in the orches- 
tra?" 

The B. O. feller gives customer an awful 
look. 

''Sixteen." 

"Are they behind a pillar?" 

"There isn't a pillar in the house. They're 
very good seats." The B. O. feller rises on 
his toes and looks meaningly over the cus- 
tomer's shoulders. 

Customer gets the movement and is bul- 
lied into saying, "Oh, all right, I'll take 
'em." Hands out a clean five-dollar bill 
and gets a sick one-dollar bill in change 
and moves away, bumping into people daz- 
edly as he puts the tickets into his pocket- 
book. He also may be heard muttering 
something about being damned if he will 
give up fifty cents more on a ticket to Ty- 
son's, anyway! 

Also the glass door swings back a hissed 
"Graft!" 

You step up and say to the B. O. F. "He'd 
have gotten the idea of the location of his 
seats quicker if you had said one row from 
the back, wouldn't he?" 



Theaters 121 

"Is that so! Do you want seats?" 

"Yes, I do. Two for to-night. What 
row?" 

"Fifteenth." 

You smile a lopsided and cynical smile. 

"All right." 

That night you go to the theater. You 
hand the usherine the ticket stubs, hoping 
foolishly against all reason that somehow 
the seats will miraculously be way down 
near the footlights — you know they can't 
be, but still — 

They are not. 

Two bulbous old citizenesses of Mosholu 
stand groaningly up and try to flatten them- 
selves out so you can pass on to your seats. 
You see that you cannot possibly walk 
straight past them, and you wonder which 
is the least unrefined manner to get by them. 
Just as you decide and start, one of the 
citizenesses says, "Oh, wait — " and grabs 
her hat from where she has pinned it on 
the nickel-in-the-slot machine in front of 
her. You think for a second she is after 
your watch. 

After you are seated and help your wife 



122 I Should Say So I 

unstrangle herself out of her cloak and pick 
up her opera-glass bag seven or eight times, 
and say, ^'O, my God, can't you hang on to 
anything?" you look in the direction of the 
stage, and gasp like a catfish in a bucket of 
flour! You seem to be gazing into a mat- 
tress with the cover off. Of course it is just 
your confounded luck to be behind one of 
the largest heads of hair in the world! The 
woman probably had more hair than was 
strictly decent to start with, and she must 
have borrowed large consignments of it 
from easy-going cousins. You look forward 
in an unfeeling way to curvature of the 
spine for her. She needn't come sniveling 
to you for sympathy when she gets it! You 
try to get a glimpse of the stage through a 
hollow curl that is pointing toward you, but 
the darn thing curves at the farther end 
and leads up toward the ceiling. 

The curtain goes up, and by leaning your 
chin on the shoulder of a beautiful young 
girl on your left you manage to see half an 
actor or so at a time. Behind in the next 
row is a family lately from Grand Street. 
(To those of you who are not Newyorkers, 




YOU SEEM TO BE GAZING INTO A MATTRESS 
WITH THE COVER OFF 



Theaters 125 

Grand Street is in one of our most exclu- 
sive residence sections!) They help the 
evening entertainment by a steady flow of 
conversation, and they all tuck what they 
can of their large feet into the backs of the 
seats in front of them, which gives you 
a particularly uncomfortable feeling that 
soiVie one is trying to get into your hip 
pocket and not caring a whoop how long 
it takes to do it. 

Then, in a very tense moment, when the 
flapper heroine is taking her nightie and 
her baby-grand piano out onto the moors 
rather than be a bone of contention between 
her father and his stenographer, and there 
is a hush in the audience as solemn as a 
British family looking over the comic pa- 
pers, some old beagle in the orchestra starts 
coughing. This gets 'em all going and it is 
only a moment when they are in full cry, 
barking away madly like the Dorsetshire 
Hounds, I mean to say! 

It's a bronchial panic. 

After you have taken a full course in 
theatergoing you are led to make the fol- 
lowing observations: 



126 I Should Say So I 

The fourth act in either comedy or trag- 
edy is always an anti-climax. 

In the last act of a comedy it is always 
the next morning and the drawing-room is 
always untidy and the ladies always come 
down-stairs into it yawning and protesting 
that they haven't slept a wink. 

Tallow candles used on the stage must be 
abnormally powerful. When one is brought 
into a dark room the room gradually be- 
comes as brilliantly illumined as Child's 
restaurant Not suddenly, but gradually. 

Women who come to the theater hatted 
always wait until the curtain starts up be- 
fore they remove their lids. 

I have seen men in aisle seats who did not 
get up and go out between the acts. 

Billy Burke and, hence, all other young 
actorines with yeller hair say, "Dunt," 
when they mean ''Don't. It's awful cute, 
but it makes you want to go outdoors and 
kick a blind black-and-tan terrier into the 
Ambrose Channel! 

When the coat-room boy in the foyer says 
several times in quick succession to you, 
''Check your coat!" you wish there were 




c:xi^^>^ 



THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN ALWAYS FINDS 
IT NECESSARY TO BLOW SMOKE GENEROUSLY 
IN THE FACE OF EVERY W^OMAN IN THE PLAY 



Theaters 129 

some way of getting around that notice in 
the decalogue about killing. 

An actor who portrays a character lower 
socially and morally and physically than the 
average run of shad gets greater applause 
than one who portrays a character corre- 
spondingly higher in scale. Which is un- 
just, because it is not very difficult to as- 
sume a lower status. Try it yourself and 
see. 

The actor who plays an American Busi- 
ness Man, especially the British brand of 
actor, always finds it necessary, in order 
to put the character over, to chew a large 
cigar unpleasantly and blow smoke gen- 
erously in the face of every woman in the 
play. 

You add to this a few of the bromidiums 
you hear: 

^^Yes, we go to the theater four or five 
nights a week — what else is there to do, 
evenings?" 

'We go every year to see John Drew, 
of course. He's a regular institution." 

''I can't stand May Irwin; but she is 
funny!" 



130 I Should Say So! 

'^Gee, aren't these rotten seats? They 
told me they were not under the balcony!" 

Between the acts: She (laughing), '^You 
always ask me if I mind, John — but you 
always go out!" 



/ Should Say So J 



WHERE TO SUMMER WELL 




f 



I Should Say Sol 



T^here to Summer W^ell 

Bore' s Head Inn^ Cotanpansett^ Mass, 
Season of 1913 

THE Management begs to announce 
the yearly or annual opening of 
Bores Head Inn 

and extends a chastely passionate welcome 
to our former patrons, if living, and warm- 
ly assures our potential new friends of 
the continued perfection of our cuisine, 
of which we have three, and the same 
care and attention and uniform cour- 
tesy at bill-presenting time that has dis- 
tinguished us in the past, the equal of 
which cannot be found in any other part 
of New England, nay not nearer than the 
Faubourg Saint-Germain. 

A Word About Cotanpansett 
Situated as it is, on a large bluff, it com- 



134 I Should Say So ! 

mands, as in the past, an unrestricted view 
of most of the mighty, blue Atlantic 
(ocean). 

Cotanpansett (an Indian name signify- 
ing 'Taradise" and "Tired Business 
Man") is a typical old New England 
Village with its quaint Colonial Homes 
and its Revolutionary Block-Houses and 
Things, which deserve and will receive a 
word to themselves later. 

Accessibility , Trains, Ktc. 
Fast and Luxurious trains pass our Vil- 
lage Beautiful every half hour of the day. 
Provision has been made for the auto- 
mobilist, Cotanpansett and environs being 
justly celebrated for the lavishness and 
profusion of its speed-traps. A large and 
commodious ell has been added to the 
county jail to accommodate the increasing 
influx of motorists. 

The Inn Itself 
Passing through the Village, up Main 
Street, protected every inch of the way 
from the ardent rays of Old Sol by the 
Gypsy and Brown-Tail Moths which cover 




BORES HEAD INN 



To Summer Ti^ell 137 

the bare branches of the justly proud old 
elms in the most affectionate and hos- 
pitable manner, and turning abruptly at 
the sight of the soldiers' monument and 
retreating in the opposite direction under 
the elms, as in the past, passing Mc- 
Clusky's Celebrated Drug & Novelties 
Store, we come to 



Bore's Head I 



nn 



the Haven of Rest, the Home of Innocent 
Pastime, the Paradise of Yachtsmen, the 
Nirvana of Refined Relaxation, the Nest 
of Exquisite though Simple Family Life. 

Situated as it is, as in the past, cozily 
ensconced behind Leatherbee's Salt Hake 
Storehouse, protected from the more bois- 
terous zephyrs of the Restless Deep, 
though enjoying the peculiar maritime 
aroma that is constantly wafted Hotelward 
from Leatherbee's, it offers a charming 
picture to the beholder, with its entirely 
renovated appearance, as the old mosquito 
netting has been renewed, regardless of 
expense, at all doors and windows, and 
eight new piazza chairs have been added 



138 I Should Say So I 

to the other two, making, in all, ten chairs 
on the capacious veranda which completely 
surrounds the INN on two sides. 

What the mind of man can conceive of 
to enhance the natural beauties of the 
grounds has been done, even to the re- 
painting of the entire croquet set. Nor 
has the Child, the Father of the Man, 
been neglected. We welcome the Child. 
The swing has been mended. 

Inside the Inn 

Our old friends will hardly recognize .the 
old surroundings, such have been the im- 
provements. For instance, they will be 
astounded at the spaciousness in the Main 
Hall this summer. The Japanese umbrella 
has given way to the safe in the fireplace, 
thus giving more floor space. 

Quite as important changes have been 
made in the Parlor. The crinkled salmon- 
hued lamp shade of yester year, though 
handsome in itself, has been replaced by 
a more modern and artistic glass shade 
decorated by hand with a charming design 
of poppies and mussel shells. 




J/*^ 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 



To Summer IVell 141 

We feel that we owe it to our sense of 
right to mention that the work was done 
by our Miss Peabody, who not only has 
served us faithfully for eighteen years in 
the capacity of Room Clerk and Writer of 
Menus but has been uniformly courteous 
to our guests — nay, has been a friend and 
companion to many and is ready this sum- 
mer, as in the past, to act as a refined so- 
cial intermediary to those of our guests 
who, through a sense of timidity, do not 
make acquaintances easily. 

The cupola has been redecorated and the 
floor covered with a magnificent grass rug. 
A superb view may be had from this cozy 
retreat of the handsome and stately Asy- 
lum for the Insane, which, by the way, is 
open to visitors. 

Note and fly paper may be had at any 
time by applying at the desk. A Checker 
and a Ouija Board are at the disposal of 
guests in the evenings. 

Bathing 

We are so favorably located with regard 
to the bathing beach that bath houses are 



142 I Should Say So ! 

indeed unnecessary, it being only a scant 
half-hour's walk from the INN to the bil- 
lows, when you are once past the railroad 
track. 

Our guests are urged to bathe in front 
of the Slumgimquit House, as they pro- 
vide a life-saver during the entire season. 

Walks, Drives, Etc. 

Dame Nature has indeed been lavish in 
her allurements to those who love her. 
The country round about is unsurpassed 
in sylvan splendors, and countless walks 
and drives woo. As a suggestion — it is 
always advisable to take the walk first, 
because the nearest livery stable is Pratt's, 
five miles east of Cotanpansett. 

Aquatic Pleasures 

Every description of sailing craft and 
pleasure boat is at the command of the 
guests of the INN. To many it is a pleas- 
ure to run down to Boston where these 
marine sports may be indulged in. There 
has been placed in a conspicuous place 
in the Office a time-table giving the com- 
plete summer schedule of trains to the city. 




A CORNER OF THE LADIES' PARLOR 



To Summer JVell 145 

All of our guests are at liberty to consult 
this time-table freely. 

Swimming Races, Regattas, Canoeing, 
and Surf Riding are an integral part of 
the summer life at the shore and may be 
indulged in by one and all. It is merely 
necessary to mention your intention the 
night before to the room clerk and she 
will see that you are driven to the Station 
in time to catch the train to Marblehead, 
where these diversions are. 

Places of Interest) Etc. 

All lovers of Architecture will find the 
quaint old village of Cotanpansett a mine 
of interest. Guests of the INN are espe- 
cially invited to patronize McClusky's 
Celebrated Drug & Novelties Store, where 
one may find a sumptuous assortment of 
drugs, fishing tackle, Bulgarian yarn, can- 
dies, gasoline, window and door screens, 
farming implements, crackers, fruit, in 
fact, everything the summer tourist may 
need. 

Mr. McClusky himself, as in the past, 
will give his personal attention to visitors. 



146 I Should Say So ! 

when permitted by his arduous duties as 
driver of the INN Station Barge, and 
Postmaster, too. 

Climate 

Cotanpansett enjoys, perhaps, the distinc- 
tion of the finest climate in the civilized 
world. It combines, happily, the con- 
stant warmth of Southern California with 
the invigorating freshness of Maine. 
Situated, as it is, on a bluff. 



T 



erms 



Terms are very reasonable, when taking 
into consideration the improvements that 
have been made with no stinting hand. 

The Management begs to say, in closing, 
that the management is under the per- 
sonal supervision of the manager. 

That everything that can be done to our 
guests will be done, cheerfully. As in the 
past. 




THE ATLANTIC OCEAN FROM OUR VERANDA— A SKETCH 
BY MISS PEABODY. MISS PEABODY DID THIS FREE 
HAND. SHE NEVER TOOK A LESSON IN HER LIFE 



/ Should Say So I 



PARLOR ENTERTAINERS 




JULIAN STREET 



/ Should Say Sol 

Parlor Rntertainers 
The Tragedy of Success 

LIFE for married men nowadays is 
just one damned hook after another. 
^ You pause in the midst of your sec- 
ond shave in twelve hours, with the lather 
that will not dry on the face doing so, to 
wrestle with Polly's hooks and eyes. 

You cuss Lady Dufif Gordon for the 
devilish flaps and cross hitchings and over 
and under lairs that you only begin to 
master as the gown is about to be discard- 
ed. When you cannot find a partner for 
a certain young hook, you surreptitiously 
hitch him on to a hunk of lace or a row 
of insane glass beads, without a halt in 
the rhythm lest Polly suspect! 

And when a hook hangs back and re- 



152 I Should Say So ! 

fuses to meet a willing eye across the two- 
inch chasm you grunt and mutter, '^Gee, 
you must be getting larger!" or, "Why the 
deuce don't you pull those strings tighter 
so this dress will meet" By the way, why 
is it that in moments of emotional stress 
men will forget that they are "gowns" or 
"frocks" and not "dresses"? 

These impolite remarks of yours natur- 
ally rile Polly, so she says, "Let it go — 
I'll ring for Sandra — she understands!" 

This, as was intended, stimulates you 
with renewed determination to complete 
the work if you sacrifice eight fingernails. 
And you reply: "Of course Sandra's men- 
tality is much superior to mine — blu, blu, 
blu, etc., etc." If you looked over Polly's 
shoulder into the mirror you would see her 
winking wickedly at herself. 

Just as you have nearly stretched that 
little gauzy triangular patch across the 
V between the shoulder blades Polly, of 
course, raises her arm and begins rubbing 
off the excess powder around her pretty 
nose. You lose the combination. 

"If you expect me to hook this dam- 



Parlor Entertainers 153 

thing while you are isadoraduncaning all 
over the room you are laboring under a 
delusion!" You get this off with the usual 
restraint and anxiety for understatement 
of the regular husband. 

Discreet silence. The work is at last 
completed. You smile with pity when 
you think of all that talk about the Panama 
Canal being such a stupendous feat of 
engineering. 

All this to go to a party. Of course you 
expect to have a reasonably decent time. 
What sort of a party? Oh, just a party. 

And then, by Heck, after you get there 
and everything seems to be going pleas- 
antly the hostess, without warning, asks 
Somebody to Do Something! 

You know what that means! You, who 
have left your more or less comfortable 
home — where you might be now if you 
had in the least suspected what was in 
store for you — you are to be entertained! 
Do those words, ''To be entertained," sug- 
gest the pinnacle of awfulness? They do. 
Yes'm. 

It would be bad enough if the enter- 



154 I Should Say So ! 

tainers were hired, but the added horror 
of it all is that they are personal friends, 
people for whom you nurse a regard, peo- 
ple you like to think kindly of, people you 
mention to other people with a certain pos- 
sessive pride! 

The first time you heard them Do Some- 
thing, if you can remember that far back, 
it did amuse you, by Jove, it really did! 
You laughed, you applauded — you might 
have even asked them to do it again. 
Which they did. 

But after you have heard them do their 
stunts for two or three decades — well, you 
know what water dropping on a stone will 
do to the stone! 

The Parlor Entertainer usually begins 
his career innocently enough. Let's take 
his growth step by jump. He has been, say, 
a rather successful writer for the maga- 
zines, and through his talent and his ability 
to placate office-boys and editors had 
gained a respectable footing on the moving 
sidewalk of contemporary letters. He has 
every reason to hope for the time when 
great magazine editors will call him by 




CHARLIE TOWNE AS MRS. FISKE 



Parlor Entertainers 157 

his nickname and go to lunch with him 
at the Players' Club. The future is glit- 
tering. Kipling is shrinking. O. Henry's 
cutaway is getting a bit tight for him 
across the chest. He feels that, as Gouver- 
neur Morris would say, this is the best of 
all possible worlds! 

One evening, out of the Nowhere, comes 
an impulse to give an imitation of Harry 
Lauder. He gives it without any an- 
nouncement. The little gathering whoops 
with delight and some one says, ''That's 
the best imitation of Albert Chevalier I 
ever heard — do it again!" From that mo- 
ment he is ruined! 

Some of the same people that were with 
him that evening are at the next party he 
goes to, and they cry, "Give us that Albert 
Chevalier stunt. Hank!" And so it goes. 
He is delighted with his success. Nothing 
exceeds like success. His regular work, 
while extremely promising, has postponed 
payment — his stunt has succeeded instantly. 
It haunts him as he tries to write that 
story for Munsey's. He smiles to himself 
as he hangs to his strap on his way home 



158 I Should Say So! 

in the evening, so that those near him edge 
away fearfully as from a madman. 

He doesn't confine his imitation to even- 
ing parties. He will do it anywhere. On 
ferries, trains, in the Park, in restaurants, 
anywhere a few friends happen to be. The 
years roll on and he still does his Cheva- 
lier. He reasons it out just as the vaude- 
ville actor does; if he has made a hit why 
tempt the fates by doing something dif- 
ferent? Why should he, indeed? Don't 
they still clamor for it? 

At the tail end of a party when the 
clock is striking Neurasthenia and some 
begin to think of the busy little meter 
racing its head off in the Gunman's Gon- 
dola below, there comes a scraping of 
chair legs and a flurry around the piano. 

'What are they going to do?" 

''Julian Street is going to sing 'Fred- 
erick Townsend Martin'!" 

"Oh, my God " 

Julian eagerly leaps to the piano-side, 
saying, "If you knew how I hate it!" You 
knew that if he was going to sing it would 
be "Frederick Townsend Martin." Julian 




B^) " Xrwin 



....^^ 



BILL IRWIN TELLS HIS FAMOUS STORY OF 
THE GREATEST NEAVSPAPER BREAK 



Parlor Entertainers 161 

has a copy of the song typewritten on white 
silk sewed into his dress coat. So you say, 
^Tes, I heard him sing that just after the 
battle of Gettysburg!" Which is not strict- 
ly true, but as he is a close friend of yours 
you feel privileged to say sarcastic things. 

Another terrible phase of this Parlor 
Entertaining is that if one Entertainer 
does his time-honored and classic imita- 
tion or song every other one in the room 
will feel grossly insulted if not asked to 
contribute his quota to the last sad rites 
of the dying party. Hence the term, '^Ex- 
treme Unction." 

Charlie Towne (a poet) then whispers 
out of the side of his mouth to his neighbor, 
"Get me to do ^Mrs. FiskeM" 

So they get him. Sweetly smiling and 
murmuring, "Gawd, how I loathe it!" he 
arranges four chairs and gives his imitation 
of Mrs. Fiske in a scene from "Leah 
Kleschna." 

I can imagine him in his home, in his 
library, sitting alone at his desk trying to 
think of a rhyme for "Butterick." Sud- 
denly he leaps to his feet. The time draws 



162 I Should Say Sol 

near when, in ordinary circumstances, he 
would be at a party doing ''Mrs. Fiske." 
With feverish and temperamental haste he 
arranges four chairs and goes to it. Then 
as the usual applause is lacking he comes to 
with a start and shudders. ''Take it away — 
take it away!" The head of the tiger-skin 
rug grins up at him and seems to hiss, 
"Haunted!" 

Then Will Irwin tells his famous story 
of the greatest newspaper break — the one 
about The Pope eloping with Lilian Rus- 
sell, — and always puts it off as being some 
one else's story. But he cannot escape that 
way! By the immutable laws of the Parlor 
and the Banquet he is doomed to tell that 
story "till the sands of the desert grow 
cold!" 

There are two distinguished entertainers 
who are more fortunate than the average 
Stuntite, inasmuch as they bear the burden 
of one story between them, one Haunt that 
does for two. They are Paul Armstrong 
and Lindsay Denison, and the Stunt is the 
story of "Pansy." 

When Jim Barnes gets on his feet it is 




yy/^^ 



OLD IRV COBB: "GIT HUNG. NIGGER-GIT HUNG I' 



Parlor Entertainers 165 

only to do "Fairfax, Fairfax County, Vir- 
ginia." 

Everybody knows that Safford will do 
the '^Jabberwock." 

If Tom Daly didn't do a wop poem they 
would feel outraged. 

And if Old Irv Cobb, the Burnt Cork 
King, didn't tell that story about "Git 
hung, Nigger" they would mob him. 
Wildhack can't eat his banquet in peace 
till he has done "The Battle of Metz." 
Burgess Johnson would burst into tears if 
no one asked him to do "The Man With 
the Wooden Arm." 

I think the Amalgamated Parlorites of 
American should in self-defense sometime 
give a dinner to themselves and do noth- 
ing but eat — not a thing! 

But you might as well say to a mor- 
phiend, "Stop morphing instantly!" He 
couldn't do it. His will power is gone! 

You who are the fathers of boys, think! 
Or, as Herbert Kaufman would say, 
"THINK!" 

If you catch any of your young sons 
giving imitations of phonographs, cows. 



166 I Should Say So! 

sawmills, dogs five miles away, soda water 
entering a glass, cats fighting, young chick- 
ens, catching a bumble-bee, baby crying, 
or any imitation of anything animate or 
inanimate, don't laugh — do that which 
hurts you more than it does them, but not 
in the identical way! Do anything to head 
off, to discourage a tendency that if al- 
lowed to become a habit will bring only 
pain in the future! 

If we but knew the inside story of the 
lives of these Human Sacrifices to the god 
of Ennui, these helpless prolongers of 
petering parties! 

Many of them appear happy and nor- 
mal, but under more than one gleaming 
shirt front their One Stunt is doing what 
that beastly fox did to that Spartan kid! 

(The author, with true author modesty, 
omits his own name from this list, where 
of course it belongs. No dinner is com- 
plete without Flagg's Instantaneous Car- 
icatures Made While You Speech. — The 
Editor.) 



/ Should Say So 1 



"COME LIVE WITH ME AND 
BE MY COOK r' 




r 



I Should Say Soi 



' ' Come Live TV^ith Me and 
Be My Cook/'' 

I'LL BET I can bag a cook, and bring 
it home to-day, at that!" 
''Go to it, Billy!" smiles Polly, 
punching another pillow in the solar plexus 
and poking it behind her as she settled her- 
self on the lounge. 

''Smile on, woman, but I mean it! It's 
arrant nonsense to say there isn't such an 
animal." 

"I didn't say so; I said I hadn't found 
one yet!" 

"You've been at it for eight days and 
we are still eating the messes that Great 
Auk sends in to us. I have said nothing." 

"Nothing!" snorts Friend Consort on the 
lounge. "You have made a noise like an 
outraged husband at every meal!' 



m 



110 I Should Say So I 

'^Well, be that as it isn't, the time has 
come for action! I can no longer stand 
having burnt suspender-buttons called fried 
potatoes, nor yet can I with any degree of 
pleasure cut into an Indian basket filled 
with concrete because the Great Auk has 
broken a bottle of Burnett's Vanilla Ex- 
tract over its bows and murmured, 'I 
christen thee Apple Pie!' The crowning 
piece of wanton deception was this morn- 
ing when I, in my trusting and fatuous 
innocence, thought she had sent in some 
brand-new chamois pen-wipers and was 
about to rise and lay them on the desk — " 
'^You refer to the griddle-cakes?" 
^'Aye, verily, none other! This ends 
to-day! I shall bring home and lay at 
your feet a regular cook! AdiosT 

Billy knew that in order to get a cook 
one had to hike over to Fourth Avenue 
and look up the Swedish embassy or the 
Finnish legation. He soon came to one 
of them. There was a long line of limou- 
sines drawn up at the curb. Billy noticed 
that the chauffeurs were all looking anx- 




o^.^>^ 



THIS IS IT I ' SMILED S. H. LUDW^IG' 



''Live With Me!'' 173 

iously up at the doorway of the embassy. 

From the expressions of those chauffeurs' 
faces he gathered that their employers had 
told them to wait within ear-shot, and if 
they heard the slightest report of a revolver 
to break in immediately! 

Getting a cook was a more serious game 
than he had imagined! 

He went up the steps with a manner 
of well-simulated confidence, and entered. 
Around the walls of the shabby-genteel 
office sat humble American ladies backed 
threateningly into corners and being men- 
aced by the powers of Europe! 

The ladies sat well back in their chairs, 
holding their mufifs or bags up for pro- 
tection. The foreign powers sat well for- 
ward, catechising and cross-examining their 
potential mi??tre??e?. 

While waiting to be noticed, Billy stood 
fascinated, listening to scraps of inter- 
views from all along the line. 

^Well, sir?" A foreign gentleman with 
a remarkably square head, sitting at a 
desk, addressed him. 

^T want to get a — a — Let's see — " 



114 I Should Say So/ 

Billy could hardly tear his eyes away 
from one corner of the office where a 
rangy brute of a Norwegian laundress 
was giving a timid little lady from the 
Bronx a bad five minutes. 



'Yes, sir!' 






'Oh, yes, I am looking for a — what 
dy call 'em?— cook!" 

^What wages will you pay, sir?" 

^'Thirty-five dollars. And I want a 
damn good cook at that!" 

''You can't expect a first-class cook, of 
course, for those wages. Still, I think I 
have what you want." Square Head Lud- 
wig disappears behind a partition. "Young 
and good-looking!" Billy yells after him. 

S. H. Ludwig reenters, leading an Aw- 
ful Retrospect in with him. 

"What's this?" asks Billy. 

"This is a nice young Danish cook!" 

"She may be Danish, but I categorically 
deny that she is either nice or young, and 
I doubt her cooking! Take it back." Billy 
waved his hand. 

S. H. Ludwig raises his wooden eye- 
brows and returns to the den with the 




'HE IS SHO^VN A STRING . . . ALL SIZES AND AGES" 



u 



Live With Me!'' 177 



nice young thing from Denmark. Billy 
can hear him arguing vehemently on the 
other side of the partition with some un- 
seen female. He catches such phrases as, 
^'Only two in the family," and ''Nice, easy" 
something — whether himself or his wife, 
Billy doesn't catch. 

Reenter Ludwig with another Terrible 
Blight, with a mustache no sophomore 
would need to be sensitive about, and 
circular earrings like sailors are supposed 
to wear, which have almost pulled them- 
selves away through her ears. 

''I am not engaging a company to play 
Macbeth or I would take her for one of 
the Witches of Endor! Where is the 
young Norwegian girl cooking-school 
graduate that you advertise?" Billy is 
getting a bit peeved. 

''This is it!" smiles S. H. Ludwig, but 
waves her back. 

Billy prays for self-control. 

"You have the nerve to call that a young 
girl? That woman who was a grand- 
mother when Charlemagne was in prep 
school! Goo^ morning!' 



vi 



118 I Should Say So I 

Billy dashes out of the place and hunts 
up another one and enters. He is shown 
a string of cooks of all sizes and ages, as 
in the first place, and begins to have a 
nightmarish sort of feeling that he will 
have to, or at least in all decency ought 
to, marry one of them. He feels a little 
woozy with this parade of all the nations 
going on. 

"For the love of entrees, bring in some- 
thing that was born since Aaron Burr shot 
Hamilton W. Mabie! These Banshee 
harems are getting on my ganglionic 
nerve!" 

Still another great-aunt of a viking is 
yanked before him. 

By this time Billy feels that he is going 
daffy, and decides to give in to the sensa- 
tion weakly. 

He glares at the ancient stove-wrestler. 

"So, my young Swedish flapper! Let's 
see your references!" 

She fumbles in a bag and fishes out 
several dirty letters. 

"Yes, yes; but where is your reference 
from Augustus Caesar's wife recommending 
your rendition of Roman Punch?" 



4 i 



Live With Me!'" 179 



Ludwig brings in another, with a tri- 
umphant smile. 

"There," exclaims Billy, ''this is some- 
thing likel Why have you been hiding 
this Scandinavian Venus from me all this 
time?" Venus giggles, and looks down 
at her feet. 

"Can you come right along with me 
now?" Billy grins delightedly. 

"How many in fam'ly?" asks Venus. 

"Oh, just two — myself, my wife and 
myself," says Billy. "Come on!" 

"Do I have to wash?" 

"Well, really! — I shall leave that to your 
better and higher nature." 

Ludwig interprets. "She means, does 
she have to do any of the washing!" 

"OA^ excuse me! I didn't quite get you. 
No; everything of ours is sent out to the 
laundry. — Come ahead!" 

"Do you have much company?" 

Billy is beginning to realize that there 
is another side to acquiring a cook. "Come 
over here and sit down, and pour your 
little heart out to me." 

So he and Venus sit down, Billy looking 
anxiously at Venus. 



180 I Should Say So I 

"Now, do we have much company? 
Never! I detest company! We never 
have an outsider in the place!" 

"That's too bad! I like to have com- 
pany. I like to cook for dinner-parties." 

Billy wilts, and mutters to himself, "Can 
you beat that! I could have sworn I was 
saying the right thing!" 

"What I meant to say was that we are 
always giving dinner-parties. I thought 
you meant company, you know — just 
strangers off the street!" 

"Do I have a room with another girl?" 

"No, certainly not; you have a room all 
to yourself!" (There, I know that's right, 
all maids like rooms to themselves!) 

"I not like that. I bane lonely!" 

Suffering Crumpets! Couldn't he have 
guessed? 

"How many in the kitchen?" 

"Well, that depends; sometimes there 
are anywhere from three to ten. I've seen 
nine in there at once myself, including 
the night watchman, but — " 

"How many servants?" 

"Oh! Just two — yourself and a wait- 



ress." 





' 'SHE'S LOOKING FOR A MAID HERSELF,' 
SMILES THE MAHOUT. 'THAT IS MISS VERA LIPSALVE 
OF THE WINTER GARDEN.'" 



44 



Live With Me r' 183 



^^Just one. I not take the place!" She 
bounces up and retires. 

At the next embassy Billy was trying 
to describe the sort of a cook he wanted, 
and he suddenly grasped the mahout by 
the wrist and pointed rudely. 

''There! the one with the black hat with 
the white feather duster on it! She looks 
like what I'd prefer to have around the 
house; bring her over; let me talk to her." 

''She's looking for a maid herself," 
smiles the mahout. "That is Miss Vera 
Lipsalve of the Winter Garden!" 

Billy promptly has an attack of sun- 
stroke mixed with asthma and the pip! 

"That's where I ought to have blown 
in in the first place! Still, perhaps it is 
all for the best! Bring on some Awful 
Villagers!" 

They have a little parade for him, and 
he wishes that some of them would carry 
torches and some come in on floats to vary 
the monotony. It has become second na- 
ture to him by this time to repeat mechan- 
ically to each one, "Two in the kitchen 



184 I Should Say So I 

two in the family no washing the cook has 
to wait on table twice every other week do 
you mind living in an apartment yes you 
have a room to yourself we have quite a 
little company can you make all kinds of 
hot breads pastry desserts and entrees thir^ 
ty-five dollars!" After which he gasps, 
^^Mmka!" 

The ones that answer correctly and have 
no objections to anything at all are of 
course the ones he wouldn't consider at 
all. 

As he said to the mahout, ^'As the cook 
will have to wait on the table twice every 
other week, she has to be able to pass 
things without sticking her stomach at you 
at the same time, if you know what I 
mean!" 

By this time the afternoon sun is step- 
ping over the Palisades, and Billy has had 
no lunch. He has been to every ignorance 
parlor on Fourth Avenue, and he feels as 
if he had been seeing Europe! 

There are no more cooks to see! In the 
last place he entered all they could dig 
up was a general-housework girl who re- 



''LiveJVithMe!'' 185 



fused to come with him because he said 
to her, ''I see you're Finnish!" 

So when worn out and with a rotten 
headache he let himself into his home 
about six o'clock, of course Polly was 
waiting for him with a peculiar smile — a 
smile that combined affectionate sarcasm 
with a sort of motherly pity. 

^^Well?" 

'Well what, dear?" 

'Where's the cook?" 

'What cook?" 

"The one you were going to lay at my 
feet, Billy dear!" 

"Be sweet to me, kid!" 



/ Should Say So I 



THE CALL OF THE SEX 







/ 



188 I Should Say So: 



THE CALL OF THE SEX by 

James Montgomery Chambers, illustrated 
by Howard Chandler Flaggy from The 
American Magazine by permission, 

TT SEEMS incredible that The American Magazine, being 
■'• a fifteen-center, has so far failed to discover Sex. That it 
has refused to line up with the other three-nickel Home- 
Shockers on the Topic of the Hour is almost unbelievable. 
Now that all of our leading Mucks have been thoroughly 
raked one cannot see what will hold the public and get its 
fifteen cents a month out of it unless it be Sex. Of course 
in a year or two it may be Humor, or Religion, or Athletics, 
or Astronomy — but the latest thing is, no doubt, Sex. 
History has produced several instances where the influence 
of Sex might have been distinctly noticed even prior to that 
Edenic affair, but the thing has not had the popular attention 
it deserves until recently. Having the interests of this 
magazine at heart, I have persuaded the Old-Fashioned 
Editors to look the other way this month while I slip over a 
little Sex stuff in order to boost the circulation in Puritan 
circles. We magazine fellers don't know much about Art, 
but we know what They like I 



THE gripping fiction of James Montgomery 
Chambers needs no introduction to our 8,427,- 
967 GUARANTEED readers. Here we have 
SEX, rampant, rampageous, quivering, yea, snorting. 
Who but this master of Sectional fiction could have con- 
ceived and executed this stupendous Story of Passion, 
abysmal, chaotic, typically American, yet virile. In 
this story we have exponents of two of our leading 
SEXES — the hairy, primeval Man-in-Khaki, the yield- 
ing yet submissive Woman. Before the reader's pro- 
truding eyes these two pawns of Destiny are hurtled 
pell-m-ell into a seething maelstrom of pulsing Passion. 
Go to it! — The Editors. 



/ Should Say So I 

The Call of the Sex 



Chapter I 

THE ardent Cuban sun shone down 
through the pall of smokeless pow- 
der that floated over the soldiers 
of Weyler and Shafter. From the palm- 
clad hills, above the stricken valley, sound- 
ed the steady raspmg bark of eight thou- 
sand merciless Krag-Jorgensens. Overhead 
could be heard the passionate shrieks of 
bullets tearing their way through the male 
and female eucalyptus trees. 

The Americans had been momentarily 
repulsed. 

Captain Cortlandt Schuyler, a descend- 
ant of a number of New York's most tire- 
some families (called by his regiment 
''The-Hairy-One" as a slight testimonial 



190 I Should Say So I 

to his extreme masculinity) , was poking 
his sword impartially into the calves of 
the legs of his demoralized boys and curs- 
ing them into condition for the next at- 
tack on the Spanish blockhouse. 

Schuyler needed no orders, nor did he 
wait for those he did not need. He knew 
all about War, as he had slept in Brooklyn 
for years and had an office in New York. 
It was Hell. 

Had you asked him what Fear was, he 
would have looked at you in a dazed way, 
scratched his head and laughed foolishly, 
^'Damfino." 

Taking from his pocket a massive, solid- 
gold cigarette case — it had been a present 
to his great, great-grandfather, the Ad- 
miral, from the Maharajah of Poo — he 
drew out a gold-tipped cigarette, marked 
only with his initials and a simple coronet, 
and nonchalantly lighted it. Although a 
member of an old New York family, 
Schuyler knew instinctively that that was 
what a cigarette was for. 

Now, flicking the ashes from the weed, 
he gave the order to advance on the 



The Call of the Sex 191 

double-quick through the tangled Perfecto 
bushes toward the enemy. 

The intrepid youngsters followed him 
as blithely as if headed toward the Polo 
Grounds instead of possible annihilation. 
What was good enough for The-Hairy- 
Onc was good enough for them. 

At the head of his men he rushed down 
into the valley, followed closely by his 
kinsman, Lieutenant Murray Hill. But 
suddenly, as Captain Schuyler was in the 
very act of leaping over some dead Span- 
iards that had not been cleaned up after 
the last battle. Lieutenant Hill saw him 
stop and stiffen. 

''For heaven's sake, Cort, are you hit?" 
cried the lieutenant. 

''Hit?" repeated the captain, with a 
mysterious laugh. "Yes, Murray; but not 
in the way you mean! I can't go on! 
You must take my place, old man." 

"What is it? Sunstroke?" 

"No, no! I can't explain. It is a weird, 
imperative summons from over there — 
beyond — beyond . . ." He pointed wav- 
eringly in eight or nine directions. 



192 I Should Say So ! 

Then, as his men swept by him in a 
cloud of dust, the captain wheeled dizzily 
to the left and staggered off into the jungle. 
As he disappeared, Lieutenant Hill, who 
stood frozen in amazement and horror, 
thought he heard a demoniacal laugh — a 
laugh such as is seldom heard outside the 
passionate pages of a Sex Story. But was 
it a laugh? Or was the cry of the amor- 
ous Panatella, circling high above? 

Chapter II 

In one of the noisome hospital tents 
Nurse Van Lithe, with a pan full of ster- 
ilized instruments, stood at the surgeon's 
side. A young trooper was about to have 
his leg amputated at the wrist, and the 
beautiful and pure young nurse throbbed 
with deep yet perfectly proper sympathy. 
(But just you wait!) She was quite un- 
conscious of the charms of her voluptuous 
figure as revealed by the alluring, low- 
necked pink chififon nurse's uniform she 
wore, as prescribed by the army regula- 
tions. From somewhere outside on the 




SHE SHRUGGED HER SHOULDERS PRETTILY 
AND MADE A CARMEN MOVEMENT AT HIM 
WITH HER HIPS. 



The Call of the Sex 195 

terrace were wafted from the muted vio- 
lins of the Hungarian orchestra the sensu- 
ous cadences of "Loin de Bal," intermin- 
gled with the overpowering scent of the 
passion flower. 

The young but susceptible surgeon, 
Catesby Farquhar by name, was waiting 
for her to hand him his instruments. A 
strong sense of the strange fascination of 
this pure though chase-me-boys girl was 
upon him. He did not look at her, but 
he knew that her mane was tawny and 
curled in little watch-springs at the back 
of her neck; that her eyelashes made a 
slithering sound when she lowered them, 
slowly, like Venetian blinds; that she 
looked as if the blood of her face had all 
been squeezed down into her red lips, moist 
and luscious — those coral-colored invita- 
tions to forget your higher self. He knew 
but too well, poor wretch, that she was 
anything but helpful in the fever ward. 

But Catesby had work to do — Man's 
Work. So he gritted his bridge-work and 
turned toward her with expectant, out- 
stretched palm. 



196 I Should Say So! 

As he did so he was horrified at the 
girl's expression. 

She was standing there in all her soul- 
withering voluptuousness with uplifted 
head and a look in her unseeing eyes of a 
blend of primordial passion, far-focused 
tenderness, unholy fanaticism 'with a dash 
of hypnotic hysteria! ''My word!" mur- 
mured Catesby, ^'can this be she?" 

The pan of instruments dropped from 
her nerveless though beautiful fingers. 

''Are you sick?" Catesby's voice was 
hoarse with emotion. 

"Never felt better in my life!" Miss 
Van Lithe smiled unsteadily at him. 

This rather got his goat. 

"Then pick up those instruments — " 

I wish to remark at this juncture that 
as a surgeon young Catesby Farquhar was 
all to the Adhesive Plaster, but on the 
Virile, Red-Blooded, Carnal Man propo- 
sition he left large wads to be desired. 
At this crucial moment he allowed his 
professional instincts to dominate him, and 
completely forgot the alluring charms of 
Nurse Van Lithe. Of course the girl 



The Call of the Sex 197 

didn't know she was seductive or any- 
thing, she was too pure to notice it any- 
how. But there she stood with undulating 
and creamy skin gleaming wherever there 
wasn't any pink chiffon uniform. Her 
white, rounded arms, with the diamond 
bracelet pushed up as far as it would go, 
on her perfect forearm, with that gentle 
heaving of her super-wonderful — You see 
what I mean — he was a boob! 

She gave him an enigmatical look and 
said, 'Tick 'em up yourself — I'm off!" 

^'You're ofif! Where?" The much-lack- 
ing surgeon was dumbfounded. 

^'I don't know where I'm going but I'm 
on my way — something calls me — some- 
thing from over there — beyond — beyond!" 
She pointed waveringly in eight or nine 
.directions. She swayed a little, still smil- 
ing. 

''Woman, are you crazy? Have you 
been hitting the wood-alcohol? Don't you 
know this poor fellow's life depends upon 
us?" 

She shrugged her shoulders prettily and 
made a Carmen movement at him with 



198 I Should Say So! 

her hips, and glided from the tent like a 
panther. 

Chapter III 

Stumbling crazily over the twisted vines 
and beating aside the affectionate tropical 
undergrowth, Captain Schuyler moved 
toward his unknown goal, humming, "Love 
Me and the World is Mine!" through his 
heavily scented blond mustache. He had 
forgotten everything, War, the United 
States, Duty, his pipe, his solid-gold cigar- 
ette case, the monograms on his shirt 
sleeves, indeed everything of any moment 
— except that he was a gentleman! He 
never could forget that under the most 
trying circumstances, thank you. 

His only thought was that something 
called him! It was a command. 

As he came to the end of the noxious 
jungle he spied something through the 
leaves — something that drew him convuls- 
ively, in jerks, suffocatingly, madly, joy- 
ously forward! He instinctively took a 
perfumed breath tablet as he galloped per- 
spiringly toward his magnet. 




^^^^> 



THEY MET IN MID-AIR 



The Call of the Sex 201 

He paused only a moment, to Blanco 
his white buckskin shoes from the little 
caa he always carried with him in an 
embroidered satin bag. Noblesse Oblige! 
On again, though the thorns ripped his fair, 
boyishly white young flesh. He should 
worry! 

Rushing bubblingly at him with a lovely 
feminine lope, unmindful of the sad havoc 
the briers were playing with her pink 
chiffon frock, which had been almost torn 
from her back in her passionate sprint, 
came Nurse Van Lithe! It was indeed 
none other! In all Cuba there was noth- 
ing like her — nay, in all fiction there was 
no chicken that had anything on her for 
pippinesqueness! Oh, Gosh! She was 
Ger-and! 

He bounded over the last rubber plant 
on the edge of the clearing. She also, with 
the glad sweet cry of the homing pigeon, 
bounced steamingly at him. 

^'O Man-in-Khaki!" she cried. 

They met in mid-air. That was some 
meeting! The Merrimac and the Moni- 
tor's was an anemic afifair alongside of it! 



202 I Should Say So! 

They landed on a soft rock, clasped in 
each other's arms, just as if they had been 
properly introduced. 

And as they sat there, he holding her by 
her shell-like ears, the low, nauseatingly 
sweet moans of a Cuban love song was 
wafted toward them from a shepherd's hut 
near by, where some one played upon the 
sexaphone. 



/ Should Say So J 



FROM GIBSON TO 
GOLDBERG 




J* J>»T 



GOLDBERG-THE GUY THAT PUT 
THE MERRY IN AMERICA 



/ Should Say Sol 

From Gibson to Goldberg 

IN this Chapter I have imagined I am 
an Art Editor of a magazine — ^what 
temerity! — and have asked (?) several 
of our most popular illustrators to make a 
drawing expressing their idea of ^'Love Me 
— Love My Dog." And here is what I also 
imagined would be the result. 

■ Note to the Illustrators. — Will you have 
the apologies sent to your homes or will 
you call for them? 




B. WENZELIv'S MODELS HAVEN'T ANYTHING 
JT EVENING CLOTHES— POOR THINGS ! 




HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY'S HEROES SIMPLY LOVE 
TO SLIDE ON POLISHED FLOORS 







HARRISON FISHER KNOWS 

WHAT THE TIRED BUSINESS MAN LIKES 




W 

w 

g 

D 
w 

D 




.^ .. 



MAY WILSON PRESTON'S— IT LOOKS EASY, BUT ISN'T 




C. D. GIBSON HAS A FOUNTAIN PEN- 
HENCE THE SHREDDED WHEAT EFFECT 




^mV^ 



MR. MORGAN GOES WITHOUT AN UMBRELLA 
WHEN IT'S RAINING INK 



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